In a sporting series like racing that has a heavy international flavour, countrymen will always be lumped together.
Paul Tracy and Alex Tagliani have been teammates and friends, but they’re not always friendly with each other. In fact, you can still find the YouTube clips of them dropping their gloves on the sidelines at San Jose in 2006.
But the two have found themselves very much in the same boat in 2009: they are part-time drivers.
It means they have to do as much work behind the scenes to even get themselves in a race car as they do once they hit the track.
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There are two Canadian stops on the current IndyCar Series. In its glory years—before racing industry politics created two weakened series out of one strong one—there were three.
Tagliani and Tracy have had to use all their connections and shake as many hands as they can in the boardrooms, so those connections help them continue racing.
Tagliani, as we all know here, has made himself an ambassador for this event, sporting the Northlands/Edmonton Indy logo on the races he can get himself into with Conquest Racing (owned by Canadian Eric Bachelart). The seeds were sown years back by Tagliani’s outgoing nature when Player’s would arrange visits to Edmonton—long before the outside-the-box dream that an Indy race would be held here—to promote the Vancouver Indy.
Tracy’s approach seems more laid back, trading on his reputation (justified!) as an outspoken, predictably unpredictable driver.
“We’re not in the same category,” Tagliani said on his last visit here, the fur on his back rising when a media member asked if he thought Tracy is, or should be, doing the same kind of schmoozing he does. “We’re two different guys.”
In a separate media conference, I asked Tracy how he felt about being one of the last two Canucks standing.
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“The tough part is me and Alex, it’s just part time. And that’s frustrating ... why things are the way they are, I don’t know. We have a lot of Brazilians in the series and we don’t race in Brazil.”
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