For the second time in his 17-year, big-league racing career, Paul Tracy has been hung out to dry by people he's raced for, been injured for, won races for and drawn the spotlight for.Although Tracy – one of the most talented, notorious, dedicated and loyal race car drivers ever to strap himself into a cockpit – finally has a ride for next weekend's Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach (the last race, incidentally, in the history of the Champ Car World Series, formerly CART), the future is anything but bright for the Toronto driver.
Only this week did his employer, Gerald Forsythe, decide to run a third car for Tracy, having kept the 39-year-old racer and his fans sitting on the edges of their seats since the war with the IRL ended. (Forsythe previously indicated that only David Martinez and/or Franck Montagny would race at Long Beach.)
And unless Forsythe changes his mind and decides to enter a team in the IRL (he has given no indication to this point of being even remotely interested), Tracy's open-wheel career could be toast because there are just not any good rides available.
Hard as it may be to comprehend, this could really be the end of the high road for one of the most intelligent, fearless, colourful and – yes, sometimes reckless – drivers in all of car racing.
That doesn't mean Tracy won't ever race again after next weekend. Of course, he will. In fact, there's a strong possibility that Tony George, owner of the Indy Racing League, Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Vision Racing of the IRL, will offer Paul a ride in this year's Indianapolis 500 – a delicious irony, considering that Tracy remains convinced that Tony robbed him of victory in the 2002 race.
And there will be offers to drive sports cars and maybe even one-offs in stock cars. The guy's too good not to get offers.
But what's evident is that it's highly unlikely there will ever again be multimillion-dollar contracts on offer to drive for top-of-the-line IndyCar teams such as Penske, Ganassi or Andretti-Green. The question is: how and why did it come to this? How did, arguably, one of the best all-round drivers in all of auto racing – and certainly the most entertaining – wind up on the outside looking in?
As I said, it's happened before.
When Tracy was with Penske (1991-`94, 1996-`97), he drove his heart out. He won a lot of races but, more important, he created a lot of excitement. A man with a quick lip, he was also never afraid to speak his mind.
That's what got him fired after the 1997 season. The car was unbeatable on ovals but a dog on road and street courses. Tracy, entertainingly vocal in post-race interviews, said again and again that if the team wanted to win races and championships, it would have to switch from its Penske chassis/Ilmor engine/Goodyear tires combination to a Reynard-Honda-Firestone setup.
He said this enough times that he eventually browned off Roger Penske, who then waited just long enough after the season was over for all the good rides to be gone for the following year before giving "The Thrill from West Hill" the boot.
Tracy's saving grace was Barry Green's one-car team that was sponsored by Kool cigarettes, who's company president happened to be a Canadian. A phone call by Green to head office resulted in his racing budget being doubled and he was able to hire Tracy shortly after.
Except for that fluke, Tracy's career could have been jeopardized then.
This time, the freezing-out is more curious. It's obvious that his big mouth got him into trouble with Penske but what did he do to Forsythe to deserve this?
If Forsythe didn't want to race in the IRL, why not tell his superstar and let him start shopping around? Surely he owed him that courtesy.
He certainly owes him something because Tracy went out on a big limb just to work for him in the first place.
In late 2002, Green's team was purchased by Michael Andretti who planned to move it to the IRL. As mentioned, Tracy nearly won the Indy 500 for Team Green that year and he drove a car sponsored by 7-11. Andretti's marketing people subsequently sold a sponsorship to 7-11 for the 2003 season, predicated on Tracy being in the car.
Except that Tracy had no intention of going to the IRL. He'd been offered a sweetheart deal by Imperial Tobacco to drive for Forsythe in Champ Car. When Andretti found out, things got nasty and Tracy was forbidden to say anything – under the threat of heavy fines – about where he would race the following season until his contract ran out at the end of the year.
He could have caved, he could have taken the easy way out and changed his mind, but he buttoned his lips and hung in there because he believed in Champ Car and he really wanted to be with Forsythe.
He subsequently went on to be a wonderful performer, champion and ambassador for the Champ Car World Series. (Will anybody ever forget his IRL "crapwagon" remark? Or his "Captain Quebec" wrestling mask and cape? Or so many other words and deeds?) In fact, if it was not for Paul Tracy, Champ Car would probably have gone out of business long before it finally did.So what would a good soldier like Tracy expect at the end of the day? A handshake and a pat on the shoulder and thanks for a job well done, at least?
Certainly not a bullet in the back, which seems to be happening.
(Even if Forsythe changes his mind and agrees to join the IRL, the fact that he's kept Tracy dangling on a string for this long is inexcusable.)
It's interesting, though. Tracy is no different than hundreds of thousands of other people in all walks of life who sell their souls to the great corporations and work their butts off and then, at the end of the day, get shunted aside like so much garbage.
Happens all the time, each and every day, but other than expressing sympathy and offering encouragement, what can anybody really do?
The difference for race fans when a guy like Tracy gets the shaft, though, is that we all get it too.
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