Paul Tracy triumphs to increase series lead

He has won five of 11 races to build a 20-point lead in the CART series.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Bruno Junqueira looked over at Paul Tracy and winced as the CART series leader talked about the rest of the season.
"I'm looking forward to every race coming up on the schedule," Tracy said as he enjoyed his victory Sunday in the Vancouver Molson Indy. "Usually in my career, I've started to come to life the second half of the season."
That is a scary thought for Junqueira and the rest of the Champ Car competitors, since Tracy has already won five of 11 races and built a 20-point lead over Junqueira with eight races remaining.
Meanwhile, Junqueira has yet to win this season but has hung in by finishing all but one race in the top five.
"We are being very consistent," the Brazilian driver said. "That's the most important thing. I think now there is going to be this stretch until the end of the year with a lot of back-to-back races. I think the best way to win the championship is to be consistent, and that's what we're trying to do."
Bounces back
On Sunday, Tracy, the only driver banned from a race by CART and on probation several times in his 13-year career, added five points to his lead as he bounced back from another dispute in his rocky relationship with series officials by turning the 100-lap race on the 1.781-mile downtown street course into a rout.
It also stamped the end to a tumultuous weekend for CART's sometimes "bad boy," but also its current star.
Tracy had said he felt "betrayed" by CART over a series of recent calls against him, including Friday when the sanctioning body stripped him of the provisional pole after Tracy blocked other cars during qualifying.
But he bounced back to win the pole and, after Sunday's race, said, "What I said is how I felt ... but I've put it past me."
Tracy, the Canadian-born driver -- now a resident of Las Vegas but still a national hero north of the border -- added this victory to his win two weeks ago in his hometown of Toronto. He has 24 career victories, tying Bobby Rahal for fourth on CART's career wins list.
Tracy built leads of nearly 20 seconds and crossed the finish line 17.82 seconds -- nearly a third of the track -- ahead of Junqueira.
Junqueira might have made it a little closer had he not stalled his engine on his first of three pit stops.
But this was definitely Tracy's day as he added this victory to a Vancouver win in 2000.
Rookie Sebastien Bourdais finished third, despite being involved in two early incidents, and Michel Jourdain was fourth, the last car on the lead lap. Fifth-place Darren Manning, another rookie, was two laps down.
IRL
BROOKLYN, Mich. -- Alex Barron happily welcomed some good fortune.
The substitute driver, who's struggled to stick to an open-wheel team despite some success since 1996, survived a dangerous spin to win the Firestone 400 on Sunday.
"Some drivers will say they're fully skilled and they pulled it all off on their own," Barron said. "But there was a lot of luck involved."
Barron passed Sam Hornish Jr. after the final turn and his average speed of 180.916 was the fastest in the eight-year history of the Indy Racing League.
The California native won his second career race with a talented move, but was fortunate to avoid disaster on the 164th lap while going 220 mph.
Side-by-side contact with Tomas Scheckter made Barron's car wiggle, slide to the infield and turn 180 degrees before he was able to straighten it. The crowd of more than 30,000 gave him a standing ovation.
Barron beat Hornish by just 0.0121 seconds, the fourth-closest race in the league's eight years.