Tracy secures surprise win

The 38-year-old Canadian twice came from the back of the pack after losing his front wing on two separate occasions, first with Graham Rahal and then with Bruno Junqueira.

But a clever strategic decision by his Forsythe Racing team put the 2003 champion out of sequence on strategy with the rest, and it paid off as he claimed the 31st win of his career just two months after wrenching his back in a Long Beach practice crash.

"I'm still kind of in shock with how the race went," said Tracy. "I got off to a really bad start, got into the mix with Robert [Doornbos] and Graham fighting. That was wing number one.

"Kind of the same thing with Bruno and Oriol [Servia]. Oriol made a move on Bruno. Bruno tried to cross under Oriol at the apex of turn one. I thought, Okay, I can kind of swing through the corner here and get a good run on the straightaway. I ran right into the back of him. That was wing number two.

"My spirits were down for six or seven laps. I kind of stayed at the back and didn't do anything. I just sat at the back of the field. The team really rallied and said, All right, come on, let's go. We can do something here with our strategy. We did."

A win for Tracy, who started seventh on the grid, looked impossibe as the field got underway as championship leader Sebastien Bourdais rocketed off the line from pole and immediately started to build an advantage.

That lasted until the first round of pit-stops on lap 30 when he and second place Will Power swapped places after the Team Australia crew got their man out in front of the Newman/Haas/Lanigan driver.

Power set about pulling away and did so for 20 laps, extending his lead to over five seconds before bad luck struck Bourdais and the Frenchman was forced to retire with falling oil pressure.

So the win, and the championship lead, was Power's, or so he though. A deflating right front tyre with 20 laps to go forced him into the pits for new rubber and dropped him to eighth.

So it was Tracy who inherited the top spot with Rahal attacking fiercely, but the NHLR driver was to be robbed of the chance to score his first win as his team had miscalculated his fuel allowance and he had to stop for a splash and dash with two laps to go.

So Tracy was left unchallenged for the win, half a second ahead of rookie Doornbos, who had recovered from a drive-through penalty for blocking in his Minardi USA car to finish second and close to within three points of Bourdais in the championship.

Third was Neel Jani, taking his first ChampCar podium in his PKV entry while Britain's Justin Wilson (RSPORTS) and front-row starter Simon Pagenaud (Team Australia) completed the top five.

Sixth was Alex Tagliani in the second RSPORTS car while Tracy's team-mate Servia and Rahal were next up.

Britain's Ryan Dalziel finished ninth for Pacfic Coast while Power completed the top ten after his unscheduled pit-stop.

Katherine Legge retired with mechanical problems while Tristan Gommendy and Jan Heylen took each other out on lap 35 at the final corner, with the former being lucky not to flip over after his front suspension broke and lodged itself under his car.

- Jamie O'Leary -