Q:
You've had your share of run-ins with Sebastien over the years. Do you think he has perhaps got
too used to winning and now he's under pressure a little bit more?
PT:
I think it's just really typical of his personality. I think that, any time he's presented with some pressure, he seems to react in a..... I think everything's great, everything's fine and he's happy when everything's going the way he wants it to go, but, at the moment it doesn't go the way he wants it to go, he reacts in a very negative, harsh way. I came across that in '03 and '04, when he and I had a lot of bantering back and forth in the media about each other and it was the same last year with AJ. Once AJ started to win and challenge him, they started going at each other verbally through the press, and now he has Robert who's challenging him. And now he has a confrontational showdown with Robert, a verbal confrontational showdown. So I think it's just in his nature.
Q:
So how do you think that he's going to fit into
F1 if, indeed, he goes there next year, because he's not going to be with a front-running team?
PT:
I think, based on his personality, he'll just be a very unhappy person to be around.
Q:
Obviously, we're in the middle of a run of races in Canada - a run of races generally week-by-week - so how do you think that that atmosphere between Sebastien and Robert will spill over into Toronto this weekend?
PT:
I'm just excited to go the press conference, as I think both are slated to be there. I'm happy not to be the one in the centre of the storm, and it'll be nice to be a bystander and look on to see how each reacts to each other. It was quite comical last week to see their reactions to each other on the podium. Robert obviously comes from a European background, and has spent time already in
Formula One. He's been around the F1 atmosphere and lifestyle for a few years now, so he definitely knows how to play the game and seems to have Sebastien pretty wound up.
Q:
Obviously, Toronto is your home race - how much are you focused on trying to get back to winning ways there?
PT:
Well, the way the trend has gone this year, we've had a good race, a bad race, a good race, a bad race. We've just come off a bad race so I'm hopeful that we'll have a good one this weekend. In all seriousness, I think we have a better chance this weekend than we did last week as I think our street course set-up is far better than our road course car. I'm not sure where we're going to be, but I feel that we should be running better this week.
Q:
You've got a useful team-mate in Oriol Servia now - how much has he been able to bring to the team and how has he helped to develop the new car?
PT:
We haven't seen a lot of development because it's been up and down the last few races, but really, with Servia on the team, it re-affirms the handling issues that we have with our cars. It would be one thing if we'd gone about this season as a one-car team for myself, and I was complaining that the car didn't handle, that the results weren't coming and that we were all over the map. I'm sure then that there would be some criticism, 'maybe Paul's older and not cutting it any more', but, now that we have Oriol on the team, his complaints are the same - we both have exactly the same handling problems and are both struggling with the same thing. It's really just a re-affirmation of where our car is. We need to work on it as a team - we can't just point the finger at anybody. The car is not where we need it to be, and we need to work at it.
Q:
Testing's more limited now under the new Champ Car rules, so how much are you going to be able to do to turn the situation around?
![Paul Tracy - Forsythe Championship Racing Panoz-Cosworth DP01 [pic courtesy Champ Car World Series]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/307375.jpg)
