Paul Tracy has been proffered a ride in a Tony George-entered Vision Racing entry for the upcoming Indy Racing League race at Edmonton, the only Indy car race in Canada this year.
Paul Tracy has been entered into the event, driving the No. 22 Subway sponsored car for Vision Racing.
Derrick Walker will run the team and call race strategy for Tracy, who will be making his first competitive open-wheel start since the Champ Car farewell race at Long Beach back in April. Tracy last raced in an IRL event in 2002 in the hotly disputed Indianapolis 500.
“I’ve been away for a little while, but I want to be back in a car and this is the first step to getting back,” said Tracy. “We have a big job ahead of us but everyone is giving it their best try.”
Vision Racing, which is co-owned by IRL founder Tony George, currently fields cars for its regular drivers, Ed Carpenter and A.J. Foyt IV.
“It’s going to be good to be back in a race car and see how we can do,” Tracy said. “A lot of these (IndyCar) teams are pretty tired right now. They’ve had a bunch of races in a short time and there have been a lot of crashes, so people are kind of run into the ground.
“We’re coming in fresh, with a fresh outlook and a lot of motivation.”
The 39-year-old Tracy, winner of 31 races in CART and its later iteration as Champ Car, found himself out of a ride when Champ Car was absorbed into the IRL’s IndyCar Series in February. Forsythe Championship Racing, for whom the Canadian raced in recent years, closed down rather than joining teams moving to the IRL for the 2008 season.
Meanwhile, longtime open-wheel team owner Derrick Walker did not have the money to make the move to the IndyCar Series and was concentrating on running cars in the developmental Atlantic Series.
So far, the only race the Tracy-Walker combo is scheduled to run is Edmonton, one of only three races from the Champ Car schedule that moved to the IndyCar slate in 2008. In the three previous events on the temporary road circuit in western Canada, Tracy has finished third, fifth and, last year, fifth again.
“We think we can show them that they can get a lot of benefit out of this deal,” Tracy said. “I’m going to do everything I can to promote it and show them how successful it can be.
“I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, but I’ve been watching the races this year and I’ve seen that anything can happen.”
| 
|