The Way It Is: On the streets of Vegas.

Monday, 9th April 2007

It wasn’t much of a race as many teams ran into refuelling or electrical or gearbox problems with the brand new Panoz DP01 spec car, but it was great to see Will Power score his first Champ Car victory in Las Vegas on Sunday.

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“A lot of the tracks we go to, the city wants to have a race, but they don’t want to give up too many streets,” Tracy added. “They want to limit it to an area where there’s not a lot of traffic. A lot of the tracks we go to are compromised tracks. They’re in parking lots or on streets that aren’t used and they make the tracks short. Most of the street tracks are a mile and a half to 1.7 miles, which is a fairly short lap for these cars. Other than Australia, this is the longest street track we’ve ever raced on and they’ve done a perfect job.”

Tracy made the point that access for the teams and fans must be improved next year. “Talking to a lot of friends here, there are no complaints about anything except it's a very long walk to get back and forth from between the hotels on Fremont Street to the pit area and the lines for the shuttle bus were very long. I would say that's probably the only thing that I heard people complain about.”

For Power the race was a perfect way to begin pursuing his goal of winning this year’s Champ Car title. “This is the first of a long marathon because we really want to win this championship,” Power remarked. ”It was a pretty cruise-y race, really. We had a good car. It handled well all day. The only issue I had was a really long brake pedal at the end of the race. But we had an 18-second lead, so we just brought it home and brought Derrick Walker his second win since '99 and it's his birthday. So a pole and a win, I think that's a pretty good present for him.”

“It was just one of those days when you’ve got a good car and if you just do a good job and get all the pit stops - we did actually have a bit of a moment in one of the stops. I knocked the right-hand guy over because the brake pedal was so long, it just locked up. We lost a fair bit of time there. It still wasn't an issue.”

To read the rest of this Gordon Kirby column and other 'The Way It Is' columns go to www.gordonkirby.com