Tracy not satisfied with status quo

Friday, April 8, 2005 | 9:29 a.m.

LONG BEACH, Calif. -- Two years ago, Paul Tracy's road to the 2003 Champ Car championship began on a 1.968-mile stretch of asphalt that winds through the downtown streets of this oceanside city.

Tracy's third career victory in the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach proved to be a springboard to a seven-win season that ended with Tracy hoisting the championship trophy for the first time in his career. A year later, Tracy returned to Long Beach and tied the legendary Mario Andretti with his fourth Long Beach victory, but that race proved to be an anomaly in a season of frustration for Tracy.

Although he won twice and finished fourth in points in 2004, Tracy struggled with a car that, he said, was behind the other teams in terms of performance.

"It was a bit of a struggle last year," Tracy said. "After coming off the (championship) year and kind of having a no-holds-barred budget to try to win the championship, the purse strings got tightened up real tight last year.

"We didn't have a major sponsor on the car so it was coming out of (team owner Gerald Forsythe's) pocket and we really didn't do any development on the car over the winter. We kind of just stayed the same and everybody else took a big step forward -- the major teams took a big step forward."

That is not the case now with Tracy and Forsythe Championship Racing, which is why Tracy said he is looking forward to Sunday's season-opening Long Beach Grand Prix with more than the usual amount of confidence.

"I'm pretty excited about the first race weekend," Tracy said. "We're not going to do what we did last year and just show up at Long Beach with the same setup we had from the year before. Even though we won the last two years, we need to make a step forward in terms of performance and I think we've made some pretty good gains.

"We made a big effort this winter, the purse strings have opened up again, and Gerry has flowed a lot more money into the R&D side of the team and we've done a bunch of wind tunnel days. We made some major improvements in the car from the stuff that we had been running for the last couple of years."

Tracy also said he feels he is better prepared for this weekend's season opener because in addition to his normal off-season workout regime, he raced for the first time in the Rolex 24 at Daytona endurance race in February. That, Tracy said, will help counter the five-month layoff from the final race of the 2004 Champ Car season.

"It's a long time in between finishing in November ... that's why I decided to do the 24 Hours of Daytona, just to get some seat time in," he said. "I didn't like, really, the way the season ended last year and I wasn't happy with some things and I wanted to keep active over the winter.

"You go out there in the race, even though it's a 24-hour race and you think you're out there just driving around, and you've always got to stay focused because you've got all kinds of cars going at different speeds. I don't think there was one lap where I didn't pass two or three cars a lap. You're always on your toes all the time. I think it was good practice in terms of keeping sharp ... and I'm not rusty in terms of race situations."

In addition to being Champ Car's premier event in the United States, the Long Beach Grand Prix has been one of Tracy's favorite races since he joined what was then the CART series full time in 1993. He earned his first career CART victory in Long Beach in 1993 and is two wins shy of matching Al Unser Jr.'s race record of six victories.

"That's been a great track for me," Tracy said of the temporary street course, which has employed several different configurations in its 31-year history. "I've got a lot of history there -- my first win that I ever had was at Long Beach, I'm a four-time winner, which is tied with Mario, and the next guy in line is Al Jr. and he was the best of Long Beach.

"We're in good company so hopefully we can get another one and get a step closer."

Tracy earned his fourth Long Beach victory last year with a daring pass of front-row starters Bruno Junqueira and Sebastien Bourdais in the first turn on the first green-flag lap and controlled the race for the remaining 80 laps.

"We probably weren't the fastest car on the track in terms of outright speed, but I was able to control the pace of the race and hold onto the lead," Tracy said. "This year, I feel we've made big improvements in the car with a lot of the things we've changed over the winter, and I think there's a good opportunity (to win Sunday)."