Drivers: Sebastien Bourdais (Newman/Haas), Paul Tracy (Forsythe), Bruno Junqueira (Newman/Haas)
Q:
We'll go ahead and get started with our post-race press conference with the top three finishers from the season-opening Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, the 31st annual running of that event, the season opener of the 2005
Bridgestone Presents the Champ Car World Series Powered by Ford.
We are joined by our second place finisher today, driver of the #3 Indeck Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone for Forsythe Championship Racing, Paul Tracy. This is Paul's 63rd podium of his career. Just two more podiums will tie him with Emerson Fittipaldi for tenth on the all-time Champ Car list as far as podiums earned. He led 23 laps today, and he will leave here second place in the points. Paul, how do you feel about the day went for you?
Paul Tracy:
I think it went great, but we could have had a little bit more. You know, we're right there. I had a good first stint, then it seemed like my car didn't really improve all that much and we didn't really get a big chunk of time. Once the track started to rubber in, guys started going faster, and I kind of ran the same pace the whole race. The whole race, every stint was the same pace. I couldn't seem to break out of the 70.2secs range, 70.1, although I got into 69s a couple times.
When Sebastien came, he came hard and there really wasn't much to do. We're not allowed to block. I kind of faded him a little bit, but gave him enough room and was fair with him. He was able to pull away. I saw that he was on the red tyres, the options, and I was on the standards at that point. I thought "well, if I can hang with him and stay close, then maybe on the next stop, you know, my final stop, we were going to be on reds. When we came out of the pits, I closed a little bit of ground on him, on the out-lap and the next lap, but he was just able to maintain that distance, that was pretty much it. We just tried to keep pace, keep it there.
Q:
Did your pre-race strategy hold up pretty much the way you planned it or were there surprises in there?
PT:
There were surprises. Twice during the race, I pushed the pit-lane speed limiter on - that's when Bruno went by me. I came out of the hairpin and accidentally bumped the speed limiter on with my hand. We're below 50 miles an hour in the last corner, and then I accelerated up, and the thing was on the limiter. Then it was misfiring and backfiring. I was hard into the limiter, and I couldn't get it to turn off, and then Bruno shot by.
