LEXINGTON, Ohio, 12 August 2003 — It was payback time for Paul Tracy at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course.
Tracy earned all 23 possible points in winning Sunday’s Champ Car Grand Prix, giving him a 20-point lead over Bruno Junqueira, who had entered the weekend with a three-point lead over Tracy.
Junqueira didn’t score a point because Oriol Servia bumped him on the 13th lap, sending him off course and causing him to fall two laps behind.
Last week at Road America, Junqueira got 23 points for winning, leading the most laps and being the fastest Friday and Saturday qualifier, while Tracy crashed early and didn’t get a point.
So the margin between the two is 20 points, as it was two weeks ago. It’s beginning to look like a two-man battle with six races to go, as third-place Michel Jourdain trails Tracy by 47 points and Junqueira by 27. “I don’t expect him or his team to lay down,’’ Tracy said. “I expect them to come back at us with full force next week. Bruno’s not going to lay over and say ‘I can’t beat their team.’ He proved that last week.’’
Tracy lost the lead only on pit stops in winning his career-best sixth race of the year and first at the Mid-Ohio course, where he had finished second four times in 10 previous CART appearances. It also was a big day for Player’s-Forsythe Racing, which had its first one-two finish in the six years it’s been a two-car team. Tracy’s fellow Canadian, Patrick Carpentier, finished second.
After the race, both wore plastic checkered-flag coverings and ran a bare-chested victory lap down pit row, emulating what Carpentier had done after winning at Mid-Ohio last year. “Finishing one-two feels really great, especially heading to Montreal, where we’ll try to make it three-for-three in Canada,’’ Tracy said.
CART’s next race is in Montreal in two weeks. Tracy won back-to-back events at Toronto and Vancouver earlier this season.
He averaged 106.251 mph and won by 0.61 seconds over Carpentier.
Tracy pulled away from the field to take a big lead at the start and led 69 of the 92 laps, losing first place only on pit stops for 13 laps to Adrian Fernandez and 10 laps to Tiago Monteiro, both of whom pitted out of sequence. Monteiro later was given a stop-and-go penalty for blocking Mario Dominguez. Carpentier said his teammate was too fast for him.
“I caught up to Paul a couple times, but to pass him would have been another story. I don’t think we would have been able to,’’ he said. “It was a fun race. I pushed hard and really enjoyed it.’’ Rookie Ryan Hunter-Reay, who started second, was third in the season’s best finish for the first-year American Spirit team.
