Justin Wilson was speaking in relaxed tones about the twists and turns his career has taken as an auto racing driver. He talked about his unsatisfying season in Formula One in 2003, and about the literal twisting and turning he does to get into his vehicle, thanks to his 6-foot-3 frame. His tone changed when the subject of Sunday's non-finish in Champ Car's season opener at the Vegas Grand Prix was broached. Wilson, of Sheffield, England, completed only 20 laps because of transmission problems. He was not the only talented driver not to get through the 68 laps as three-time defending series champion Sebastien Bourdais and touted rookies Graham Rahal and Simon Pagenaud also did not finish.
But it may have bothered Wilson a little more than the others. Three-time series champion Bourdais has made his money, and Rahal and Pagenaud are the new kids on the block. Wilson finished 11th overall in 2004 in his first season in Champ Car. He was third in 2005 and second to Bourdais last year. There is a burning desire to take the whole ball of wax this year, so Sunday's result was not cool.
"It's very difficult," said Wilson, who will race this weekend in the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach. "It actually haunts you. I woke up at 5 this morning (Monday), was writing notes on what I think we need to do better. It gets under your skin and that's part of the driver making sure you don't fail again. "Failing is quite a big part of this and you don't want to feel that too often. Once it comes down to race day, you gotta put that out of your mind and think you have just as good a chance as anyone else of being right up there at the front."
In the back of the pack is where Wilson found himself most of the time during his one season of Formula One while racing for Team Minardi. Wilson said that in F1, perhaps more than any other series, it's the teams with the bigger budgets that are always going to do better. Since Minardi did not have a big budget, its cars simply were not as fast as those whose teams did.
"Formula One is very different to most auto racing," said Wilson, 28. "All the cars are built by the teams themselves, so there is a big differences in the speed of the car. You're basically racing your teammate because he's the only one who's got the same equipment you have. "We were the back team, so we were qualifying 19th or 20th. If you qualified 19th it was a good day. If you qualified 20th, it was a bad day."
Wilson moved to Team Jaguar, which was a middle-of- the-pack team, for the last five races of the season. But he was then replaced because Jaguar was looking for a paying driver, rather than one it had to pay. So Wilson happily moved on to Champ Car in 2004. For one thing, its prestige aside, F1 simply was not the grand endeavor Wilson had envisioned.
Paul Tracy found himself in mid-pack running 9th fastest in today's qualifying and only very slightly improving on his time from Friday. Because of his performance yesterday he will start tomorrows race on the front row along side todays Pole winner Will Power. Team Australia's Power, born and bred in Toowoomba Queensland, beat his nearest rival today by an amazing 0.886 of a second. Today's result supports Power's maiden pole at his home race at the Lexmark Indy 300 on the streets of Queensland's Gold Coast last October. Power then went on to claim his first podium in the final race of the year in Mexico and clinch the "Rookie of the Year" title as a result.
Will Power #5 Aussie Vineyards Cosworth/DP01/Bridgestone -"I think it's going to be important for everybody to get through the first corner and go racing. I think this is the start of a new era for Champ Car. You've got a bunch of new young drivers that are in the series, obviously showing that they're quick. It's not the scenario that everybody thought it was going to be where everybody was saying in the off-season, Sebastien is going to run away with everything. He's starting near the back.
Paul Tracy #3 INDECK Cosworth/DP01/Bridgestone - "It was a little tougher for us today. Obviously we made some changes from yesterday. But it just seemed like my car suited going over that big jump in the chicane. We just never really got a chance to capitalize on the tires. We seemed to either catch a red at the end of the first set of tires, then the second set of tires I had some traffic with Pagenaud, which didn't help. That kind of just killed our qualifying effort.
Las Vegas, Nevada – April 6th, 2007 – In the very first qualifying session of 2007, the very first qualifying session with the new DP01 cars, Paul went out and handed everyone a Vegas style smackdown grabbing Provisional Pole and scoring the first points of the season. PT moved into P1 with 12 minutes left in the 30 minute session and he stayed there until the checkered. A year-round resident of Las Vegas, Tracy (#3 Indeck Cosworth/DP01/Bridgestone) has traveled the streets of his adopted hometown on many occasions, but never at the speeds he approached today in pacing first-round qualifying for the 3 Indeck Cosworth/DP01/Bridgestone. Tracy took the first official championship point of the 2007 Champ Car World Series season, setting a track record with a best time of 1:19.784 (110.097 mph) around the 2.44-mile street course. His performance earned him a front-row start for Sunday's season opener as well as the vital championship point for leading the session, as he came in .214 seconds ahead of rookie Simon Pagenaud (#15 Aussie Vineyards Cosworth/DP01/Bridgestone).
The first qualifying run of the year was dominated by Vegas residents in its early stages as Tracy chased and eventually caught RSPORTS veteran Alex Tagliani (#8 LNX2 Cosworth/DP01/Bridgestone), who led through the first 25 minutes of the session. Tracy spun his top time with less than four minutes left on the qualifying clock, sparking a furious final thrust that saw four drivers swap the top three spots in the space of 120 seconds. Pagenaud showed that his $2 million prize for winning last year's Champ Car Atlantic title was money well earned as he came out in his very first Champ Car qualifying session and snared the second spot on the dais, carding a top time of 1:19.998 (109.803 mph). His time was the best among the eight rookies in the field on a day where four of the rookies ended up in the top 10.
Three-time and defending series champion Sebastien Bourdais (#1 McDonald's Cosworth/DP01/Bridgestone) rebounded from early-session mechanical trouble to take the third spot on the speed sheets, stopping the clocks at 1:20.197 (109.530 mph). Bourdais ran just two laps in the first 25 minutes of the session before going out with eight minutes left on the clock, posting his best time on the last of his eight laps of the day.
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