Tuesday, Sept. 21, 2004 | 10:36 a.m.
(Winners in parentheses)
April 18 -- Long Beach, Calif. (Paul Tracy)
May 23 -- Monterey, Mexico (Sebastien Bourdais)
June 5 -- The Milwaukee Mile (Ryan Hunter-Reay)
June 20 -- Portland International Raceway (Sebastien Bourdais)
July 3 -- Cleveland (Sebastien Bourdais)
July 11 -- Toronto (Sebastien Bourdais)
July 25 -- Vancouver (Paul Tracy)
Aug. 8 -- Road America (Alex Tagliani)
Aug. 15 -- Denver (Sebastien Bourdais)
Aug. 29 -- Montreal (Bruno Junqueira)
Sept. 12 -- Laguna Seca, Calif. (Patrick Carpentier)
Sept. 25 -- Las Vegas
Oct. 17 -- Seoul, South Korea
Oct. 24 -- Surfer's Paradise, Australia
Nov. 7 -- Mexico City
November -- TBA
When Jimmy Vasser accepted a stake in the ownership of PKV Racing at the beginning of the 2004 Champ Car World Series season, he envisioned the day when he could hang up his driving suit and still remain active in racing as a team owner.
But at the age of 38 and the only owner/driver in the series, Vasser admitted that the thought of retirement is a difficult concept to grasp.
"It's hard to envision the time when you're going to let it go," Vasser, a Las Vegas resident, said. "Everybody has their own time or their own reasons (for retiring). There's everything from a guy like (NASCAR's) Rusty Wallace, who is still driving and now he's planning his last season, to a guy like Gil de Ferran, who called it quits at 35 at the top of his career, still winning races and championships and the Indy 500.
"Somewhere in between there is (right) for me; I don't want to hang on forever and keep taking a seat. There's not a lot of seats and there are a lot of young guys and girls coming up that are expected to transfer into the rides and guys like me don't need to be hogging them forever -- even if I still can beat them."
Vasser, who will be racing in Saturday night's Bridgestone 400 Presented by Corona at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, has been driving Champ Cars since 1992 and holds the series record for most consecutive starts at 194 -- and counting. He is a 10-time race winner and captured the series championship in 1996 while driving for team owner Chip Ganassi.
His last victory came in the 2002 season finale at California Speedway, while driving for Team Rahal, when he won the fastest Champ Car race in history with an average green-flag speed of 197.995 mph.
In 11 races this season in the No. 12 Gulfstream Ford-Cosworth/Lola, Vasser has seven top-10 finishes, including a season-best second-place effort in the Molson Indy Toronto in July, and is 11th in points. Despite driving for a second-year team that is fielding two cars for the first time this season, Vasser said he isn't pleased with those results.
"We expected much better," Vasser said. "We expected to be winning races and I should be running up front. We have the equipment to do so and we certainly want to do a better job.
"The goals are simple: We need to win races, we need to run up front. If we can't win, we need to run second. If we can't get second, we need to run third. We're out there to win so we're in the process of building a team that's going to be capable of fighting for the championship."
And, one day, Vasser plans to turn the driver's seat over to a talented young driver.
"I'm building the team to give to somebody, really," Vasser said. "I can't hang on forever. I've had a fantastic career and while it's not over, (but) certainly there are less driving days in front of me than there are behind me.
"When the time is right and the right guy -- or girl -- is there for a replacement, I'm going to step aside and hopefully turn over a team that's ready to win the championship."
Vasser said he would begin taking a more active role as co-owner of the team as the series heads into its final three races of the season.
"My approach coming in was that I was coming in to a new team, albeit with some ownership stake, but I figured that the best thing I could do was just be the driver and not throw my weight around as an owner and make changes that, normally, a driver doesn't have the authority to do," he said.
"The reason that my partners gave me the opportunity for ownership is because I've been racing a long time and I'm supposed to bring some wisdom and some answers to the program and I'm starting to undertake some more duties along those lines."
Although he has begun to focus more on the ownership side of his dual role, Vasser said it wouldn't come at the expense of his primary duty of driving.
"We feel like we can win any of these races remaining," Vasser said. "We fully intend to win some races and contend for the championship (next year). We know that when we get things right, we can run up front.
"We fully intend to be more of a protagonist than we have been."
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