Paul Tracy is Back!

April 17, 2009
Bleacherreport.com

Today had plenty of good news for the Indycar Series, as KV Racing Technologies announced that Canadian Paul Tracy will be racing at Indy, teaming up with regular KV driver, Mario Moraes.

Major insurance compay, GEICO, will be jumping on board as sponsor, thanks to agent Doug Barnette.

Barnette already had a partnership with GEICO, initially introducing the sponsor to NASCAR drivers Mike Wallace and Max Papis.

Tracy is back and looking for revenge after thinking he had won the event in 2002, but a late caution caused major confusion between drivers and officials. Helio Castroneves was declared the winner.

"I got cheated out of that victory at Indy in '02 because I know where my car was in relationship to [Helio] Castroneves' when the caution came out," said the 2003 CART champion.

"Indy is the one thing missing from the top shelf of my trophy room and I'm going there to win the race, not to just make the field or drive around all day. If we don't win, I'll be disappointed."

The 40-year-old Toronto, Ontario native was a regular in the now defunct Champcar World Series, but lost his ride when team owner Gerry Forsythe shut down operations of his race team after open wheel unification.

Tracy ran one race in 2008 at Edmonton, driving a Derrick Walker entry fielded by Vision Racing. The Canadian veteran proved to everyone that day he could still run a car up front, finishing fourth in his home country.

"I've been working on this for a long time and I'm glad to see everything come together," said Vasser, who co-owns KV Racing with Kevin Kalkhoven. "Having GEICO with us is huge and I can't thank Doug enough for putting this deal together.

"What's kind of cool is that I introduced Doug to [Paul Tracy] a few years ago when Doug helped me get a sponsor for my Busch ride."

His big popularity and exciting style of driving is exactly what the Indycar Series needs to sell tickets, but yet he is having a very tough time finding a full-time ride.

After losing sponsorship, KV Racing Technologies were forced to minimize to a one-car operation with Mario Moraes as driver. Last year's drivers, Oriol Servia and Will Power, were released from the team. Power has since been picked up by Penske, but nothing for Servia.

"We're still working on stuff for Oriol and we want to run three cars at Indy if possible," said 1996 CART champion, Jimmy Vasser. "But we're running out of time."

Asked if Tracy's deal could blossom into a full-time deal, Vasser replied: "We hope so if we can do a good job and we plan to do just that. Just getting GEICO involved in Indy-car racing is a good deal and we want to put on a good show for them."