Paul Tracy suffered a compression fracture to his first lumbar vertebrae in his lower back while practicing Saturday for The Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach that will keep him out of action for approximately three months. Tracy commented, “This is obviously a very unfortunate situation; it’s really a shame because it pretty much ruins the championship for us this year. I’m very disappointed for the whole team because we had gotten off to a great start in Vegas and we were pretty strong here, we were building momentum and just hoping to be fast and consistent the whole year."
"I was coming off Turn 1 and got back on the throttle pretty hard and the car just snapped around, I went head on into the wall and then the car jumped up in the air and then slammed back on the ground. I could tell something was wrong right away. Now I’m just going to go home and rest for a couple of days and then early next week we’ll start figuring out the best recovery options so I can get back in the car as soon as possible. I feel OK right now after all the medication that the doctors gave me, but I’m just sore and stiff and I just need some rest."
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.
Las Vegas, Nevada—Sunday, April 8, 2007—Paul Tracy and the Forsythe Team proved today that they will be a force to be reckoned with during the 2007 Champ Car World Series Season by finishing third at the inaugural Vegas Grand Prix.
Starting from the front row, Tracy took the lead when the green flag dropped and held it for nine laps until Will Power managed to squeeze through at the braking zone for Turn 1. Tracy said, “It went really well today. I was able to get a really good start and get by Will (Power) on the first lap."
Entering the season opening Champ Car World Series weekend in Las Vegas this week, Will Power (#5 Aussie Vineyards) divulged his plan for the first three races, laying out a plan where he would carry a 15-point lead in the standings to Round Four at Portland. And now after today's Vegas Grand Prix lit the lamp on the 2007 Champ Car season, Power is halfway to his goal, having gotten the jump on the field with his first Champ Car victory. Power dominated Sunday's season opener, setting the fastest lap of the race on his way to a 16.787-second margin of victory for not only his first win, but the first Champ Car win ever for an Australian-born driver. Power led 38 of the day's 68 laps, and benefited from a fuel problem that befell early-race leader Paul Tracy (#3 Indeck) to roll to his first win.
Robert Doornbos (#14 Muermans/Jumbo Supermarkten/Mediamall) had a comfortable margin ahead of Tracy as his second-place finish gave the new Minardi Team USA a podium.
The series will pack up and roll to Southern California for next week's Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, which will be the second of three races in three weeks.
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