CART MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 5, 2000

Paul Tracy

PAUL TRACY: Thank you.

PAUL TRACY: Well, I think the best that I have ever had. Like you said, we are going into races where I have always been very strong at, but that doesn't mean anything this year, so, really what we have to focus on is just what we have been doing and that is just trying to do a good job on the race car, concentrating on all the changes that we do to make sure they are right. Make sure that we have a good car that I can race with and if we can achieve that, then we will have good races and hopefully score good points.

PAUL TRACY: Well, I think just getting to know my team better. Getting to understand the car better. Those have been the key things really, I think, I really know the car well now and sometimes we get it right and sometimes we get it wrong, but those days, when the car is just average, when you can get a good finish and get a Top-5 finish, that it is going to be important.

PAUL TRACY: No. Not at all. I mean, he has been a CART Champion, a Formula 1 Champion, and I don't really think about it that way who gets the most media attention - really isn't all that important to me. What is important to me is just doing the best I can and doing a good job for my sponsors and my team and make sure that they are happy.

PAUL TRACY: I think that a team has got to work together and I think that is what our biggest strength is at Team KOOL Green is that Dario and I really work together and we work hard and concentrate on being fair with each other and, yeah, we have had accidents together, but that hasn't caused any self destruction within the team. I mean, accidents happen and we are still united and we are a strong team.

PAUL TRACY: Well, I mean, I don't think it has really changed for me because I have been in situations where if anybody wants my setup - I have been with a lot of high profiled teammates - I have been -- when I started I was teammates with Rick Mears and Emerson Fittipaldi and Al Unser, Jr. and Michael Andretti and for me, I mean, my setup book is always an open book. If you want to use my setup, go ahead. I don't have anything to hold back and sometimes it hasn't gone the other way for me, but with Dario, his book is opened and that -- we have a really strong mutual kind of a bond with each other that we are honest with each other and sometimes it is not that way.

PAUL TRACY: Well, I don't know. I know this is a good situation to be in. I led the Championship for 7, 8 races for quite a while and I would have liked to have checked out, all the points that we missed out on would have been nice to have, but we don't have them. So really, what our focus is, we are not focusing on the Championship so much. I think that was maybe a bit of our problem in the middle of the season is that were -- all we were worried about was points, points, points. What we are focusing on now is having fun and having a good time and going out there and giving our best effort to have a good race. And when it all comes down to the end, when the checkered flag falls at Fontana, if we win the Championship, that is great. But what we have to do is put in an effort every weekend to achieve that and not concentrate so much on the Championship but just concentrate on doing the best that we can.

PAUL TRACY: That is definitely out there, but I think if you focus on that, I think that we found on to your team, that if we try to focus on that, then it doesn't seem to -- it kind of breaks our concentration. So what we are going to focus on is just the race car and having good races and where we end up at the end is where we are going to end up.

PAUL TRACY: Really myself and my engineer Tony talked about it first; then we were just through the middle part of the season when we were leading the Championship, we were thinking, okay, we have got to finish in the Top-5. That is all we have got to do every week. Just concentrating too much on just trying to -- on just points alone and not just, you know, having good races and going out there to race. That is what we have been doing. We decided that we are going to do -- we are going to go out there and race and race as hard as we can and go as fast as we can and wherever we end up at the end of the year is what is going to happen. That is what we are focusing on.

PAUL TRACY: Yeah, it has worked the last two races, so hopefully it will work the next five.

PAUL TRACY: It was just a great day. Not only -- not only was it a great day, but it was a great week and I think, you know, the atmosphere at the race was just so fantastic. It was more of a celebration of Greg's life and I think the whole weekend with Dario qualifying on the pole and me being able to win and all of his friends doing well in the race, I think it just gave everybody some closure and put everybody in a different frame of mind.

PAUL TRACY: I have no idea why, but I know now that I have won both of them and like I said in the papers, that winning those two races for me is almost like, you know, if there was any two races that I have ever wanted to win, it would be those two.

PAUL TRACY: We have struggled with the car quite a lot. The team, as a whole, has struggled quite a lot with the car. Really focusing on all the bad parts of the car and things that we haven't been able to fix, we have just decided, well, the car is not, you know, you see a lot of guys sliding and slipping around and really having to man-handle the cars a lot, and we have just come to the realization that we are not going to be able to get the car to handle like the 1999 car and we just have to deal with the problems. And if the car is bad, we need to make it just a little bit better and every change, if we can make it a little better, a little better, it won't be as bad as when we started. Not trying to focus on: Well, it doesn't handle like last year's car and it doesn't do this like last year's car. Well, it is not going to do that. Trying to make it do that, it is not going to happen.

PAUL TRACY: Well, I got a go-kart team. I have started manufacturing my own go-karts. They are made in Italy and I have and importer, his name is Mark Zatarian (phonetic). He is in San Diego. I have a go-kart team which is, I sponsor four young guys and we go to all the different races, we select big shifter car races. It has been a lot of fun. We haven't won a race yet this year, but a couple of my guys have been real close winning and there is four races left in their Championship.

PAUL TRACY: A little bit out there. A little bit of a headache once in a while. I have got a range of guys from their early 20s to 15 years old and you deal with the personal problems that -- to give you an example, the youngest one on the team, he is actually the fastest guy. The other guys on the team, when they were riding around in the truck going to different races, they'd always pick on him because he was the youngest, and his father called me up and said: The kid is all upset. He doesn't want to drive anymore, and it came down to the other guys were razzin (sic) him and it was getting to him. Having to sort out all these problems and logistics, all that kind of thing, can be a little bit overwhelming sometimes.

PAUL TRACY: Well, I am not, you know, for me, I had really -- my only other option was the Players deal and they made me an offer and that was kind of my baseline for what I wanted and I went back to Barry and I said, hey, this is what it is going to take and he said, no problem. So I signed with the team. I wanted to stay with Team KOOL Green because I feel we have the best team. I have the best crew guys in the pit lane and the people I am working with I really enjoy working with. I am set now; happy with my situation, and I think it has shown in my performances.

PAUL TRACY: I think so. I just really like working with the people that I am working with and I think that, you know, the atmosphere that I have is conducive for me to do well. This was the best case scenario with for me was to stay with the team I was with, and I -- we were all able to put it together.

PAUL TRACY: Well, I don't see myself racing in 15 years, that is for sure. I don't have any motivation to own a team or anything like that. I can see his side of it. He has always brought the sponsorship and brought the money and funded the whole team and really there is a profit margin involved when a team owner says: I need X amount of money to run you for the year, you know, there is -- X amount is profit built into the budget. So I think he is looking at it long-term that he has been paying somebody else to do a job. I think he feels that he can put his own program together, maybe run it a little with it more cost effective than what it's cost him and I think he is talking about maybe doing a second car as well. He is looking at it his own long-term security.

PAUL TRACY: I just want to drive. I am at my best when I don't have to think about anything else but just driving. I don't want the headaches of trying to -- I have a go-kart team and that is enough headache as it is. Trying to do -- to be owner of an IndyCar team or any other type of team would be too much to concentrate on driving.

PAUL TRACY: Well, I think I am still as aggressive as I have always been. I think you still have to be that way to win races. But I think I know when to hit my shots and when to pull my punches and know when to attack and when not to. In the past it was always just, you know, go, go, go, charging all the time and I think now I have got a system down where I know what I know what works and I know what doesn't work and the competition now is so much greater than it was in years past and it is so much harder to win a race now; that to win now is even more special than it was earlier.

PAUL TRACY: I don't think there is any one person. I think it is just a combination of everybody that I work with. And to my parents, my wife, my team, my engineer, my team owner, everybody is involved, and it is not just me that is out there. I have got a lot of support system, so I get help from everybody.

PAUL TRACY: I hope so. I have won there three times before and was fourth last year. A little bit concerned going in. I didn't get to test and Dario didn't have a real good test there, so we are looking at our setup right now and we are going to go in and just do the best we can.

PAUL TRACY: A little bit. Those guys, any time they needed advice or need help, I am there to assist. But I really -- I haven't driven one of those cars in a long time so I can't really tell them too much. But any time that they need any help we are always there.

PAUL TRACY: There is always a lot of different variables. I mean, money is the big one, but my motivation was to keep my same crew guys. Tony is a bit of a questionmark. He is year-to-year. So we just, you know, all kinds of things involved in doing contracts. But money is -- money and that kind of thing is one of the most important things.

PAUL TRACY: Well, I think really Michael is going to be the toughest guy because he has been there and he has done it and he has won championships and he knows he can win anywhere on any given day and he has the most experience of anybody. So I think he is going to be the toughest guy.

PAUL TRACY: Quite a bit. I am on the phone with my -- the guy who runs my team, the team manager of the team, I talk to him just about everyday. So they have quite long breaks in between races. It is not like they race every week, so when they are racing at big events, like once a month or and then they just do local club kind of stuff around, go to different tracks, but I am on the phone with the team guys just a couple of times a week with the drivers and my team manager almost every day.

PAUL TRACY: Yes.

PAUL TRACY: It is called Paul Tracy Carting.

PAUL TRACY: Thank you.