Tracy prevails for the first time at Mid-Ohio course

LEXINGTON, Ohio -- Paul Tracy decisively ended his frustration at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course.

Tracy dominated Sunday's Champ Car Grand Prix, losing the lead only on pit stops in winning his career-best sixth race of the year and first at Mid-Ohio, where he had finished second four times in 10 previous CART appearances.

It also was a big day for Player's-Forsythe Racing, which had its first one-two finish in the six years it's been a two-car team. Tracy's fellow Canadian, Patrick Carpentier, finished second.

"Finishing one-two feels really great, especially heading to Montreal, where we'll try to make it three-for-three in Canada," Tracy said.

CART's next race is in Montreal in two weeks. Tracy won back-to-back events at Toronto and Vancouver earlier this season.

"I've been a bridesmaid a lot here, had good runs but never was able to get to the top of the podium. I even wrapped up an Indy Lights championship here in 1990 with a win. So to come back here now and have a win feels great," Tracy said.

He averaged 106.251 mph and won by 0.61 seconds over Carpentier, who won here last year and was third in 2001.

Tracy pulled away from the field to take a big lead at the start and led 69 of the 92 laps, losing first place only on pit stops for 13 laps to Adrian Fernandez and 10 laps to Tiago Monteiro, both of whom pitted out of sequence.

Monteiro later was given a stop-and-go penalty for blocking Mario Dominguez.

Tracy's victory gave him a 20-point lead in the driver standings over Bruno Junqueira. Tracy won the maximum 23 points for the race -- 20 for winning, one for leading the most laps and two for being the top qualifier Friday and Saturday.

Junqueira failed to pick up any points. He finished 13th, losing two laps when Oriol Servia bumped him on the 13th lap, sending him off course.

Tracy crashed early last week at Road America, allowing Junqueira to move past him into first. He said he knew a similar performance could be costly at this stage of the season, which has six races to go.

"I had a long talk this weekend with (Player's-Forsythe technical adviser) Tony Cicale and he said 'We're not going to win the championship at Mid-Ohio, but we could lose it at Mid-Ohio if we have a bad race,"' he said.

Rookie Ryan Hunter-Reay, who started second, was third in the season's best finish for the first-year American Spirit team.

Local favorite Michel Jourdain of Team Rahal, CART's only Ohio-based team, was fourth. He's third in the points race with 137.