By Bob Pockrass - Associate Editor, SceneDaily.com
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Paul Tracy, the 2003 Champ Car champion, will drive for Germain Racing in the Sept. 20 Craftsman Truck Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, the driver said Thursday afternoon.
The 39-year-old Tracy tested a truck for Germain earlier this year at Chicagoland Speedway. He had never been to the track nor in a truck, but he said he was able to run similar times to Germain driver Todd Bodine during the test.
Tracy’s NASCAR experience consists of six starts in the Busch Series in 2006, with a best finish of 24th at Daytona.
“It was pretty easy because the truck was set up good,” Tracy said. “It drove good. The truck had telemetry on it, and I could look at what Todd was doing. … I was pretty surprised at how well the truck drove because my only experience in stock cars has been in really bad equipment.”
Tracy, who lives in Las Vegas, has been idle most of this year after Forsythe Racing opted not to field a team in the newly unified Indy Racing League. He competed in the final Champ Car race this year and will be racing some classic cars in England later this summer. He’s also trying to put together a deal to run the IRL race in Edmonton this summer.
“At this point, I’ll drive anything anywhere,” Tracy said. “I think there’s a misconception of people think that I don’t want to drive in the IRL or I don’t want to drive in NASCAR.
“I’d love to drive, but I want to drive good stuff. I don’t want to run down and be struggling and look like an idiot. Nobody does.”
As far as the Nationwide Series race at Montreal in August, Tracy has not been able to put together a deal to run in his home country.
“We tried to put something together to do Montreal and went around to all the companies in Canada and just really couldn’t get anybody to pull the trigger in the timeline that a lot of these guys [from the teams] needed to do a deal,” Tracy said. “We kind of ran out of time on that.
“This truck deal is a really good opportunity for me. I want to do stuff that I can get in it and run really well.”
Getting to race in the city where he currently lives was more a coincidence as Germain had not committed the third truck for that event. Germain is fielding a third truck in select races for Chrissy Wallace. Doug Barnette, Tracy’s agent, and the team are looking for sponsorship for potentially more races.
“I’m grateful for the opportunity,” Tracy said. “For sure, I’d like to do more. … We’ve got to juggle around if there’s an opportunity to do more and secure the funding. But right now Bob [Germain] has made the commitment that he’s going to fund the one in Vegas.
“We’ll generate a lot of media out of it. We’ll draw a lot of attention to the truck series.”