Getting to wrap his arms around the Vanderbilt Cup last season after winning the Champ Car World Series was the culmination of 13 years of battling for Paul Tracy, but the Canadian shows few signs of being wearied by the effort.

Having romped to the crown on the strength of seven wins and six poles, the Forsythe Racing driver showed that the competitive fire still burned by picking up where he left off and blitzing the field in Long Beach to score his 27th career victory.

The win gave Tracy the points lead after one event and, after a seemingly interminable gap since the opening round, he will look to maintain that position as the series heads to Monterrey in Mexico for the Tecate/Telmex Monterrey Grand Prix - where the Canadian is also the defending race champion. Tracy paced 69 laps around the 2.104-mile Fundidora Park circuit a year ago to score the second of what would be a season-opening string of three straight wins, and is coming off a Long Beach trip that saw him out front for 78 of the 81 laps.

The champion leads a field of 18 cars to Monterrey this week, as the series makes its fourth trip to Fundidora Park. The first of two trips to Mexico this season, the event is expected to once again draw a massive crowd to add to the 750,000+ fans that have attended over the past three years - despite the absence of crowd favourite Adrian Fernandez.

Knowledgeable to the last, the Mexican fans will be cheering for each of the 18 drivers that take the green flag, but will take special interest in a quartet of their countrymen that are looking to bring the Nations' Cup home for the first time in its ten-year history.

RuSPORT's Michel Jourdain Jr leads the charge, coming off a second-place run in Monterrey a year ago and showing well throughout the 2003 championship campaign. The former Team Rahal pilot has fared well on the Fundidora Park course, finishing on the lead lap in each of the previous three Champ Car events there, and finishing in the top four in each of the last two. A slow start to his relationship with series newcomers RuSPORT failed to make Jourdain a challenger in Long Beach, but he will hope that the gap between races has allowed the partnership to settle and develop.

Mario Dominguez has not enjoyed the same sort of success in Monterrey, but is looking to turn that around this year after climbing the podium in front of a boisterous Mexico City crowd last year. Dominguez started the 2004 campaign in strong fashion with a fifth-place run in Long Beach, but is still looking for his first top-ten placing at Fundidora Park.

Rodolfo Lavin made a strong impression in his first event as a member of the three-car Forsythe Championship Racing squad, qualifying ninth and finishing tenth in Long
Beach. The San Luis Potosi native has a pair of race-day experiences under his belt at Fundidora Park, placing 15th a year ago in the Champ Cars and running seventh in 2002 while competing in Toyota Atlantic.