CHAMP CAR WORLD SERIES: MOLSON INDY MONTREAL

August 26, 2005

Sebastien Bourdais

Oriol Servia

Paul Tracy

PAUL TRACY: I think it went well. Obviously, our plan was to go at the beginning really to capitalize on the clear track. You know, the car was good, but still lacking a little bit of grip that we need to do the kind of time that obviously the Newman/Haas guys did. We need to do some work overnight. Balance is pretty good. Just lacking a little bit of grip. So we'll keep working at it.

PAUL TRACY: Well, obviously we had another set of tires. We went early, so we had made a pretty big change to the car in the direction we feel we needed to go. We didn't get a chance to try that. But, you know, we'll work on it again tomorrow in practice and try to make it better. Hopefully tomorrow we'll have two shots at it.

PAUL TRACY: Obviously, a lot of it comes down to balance and car setup and having the car right. I just haven't had the car the way I've wanted it to feel here in the years that we've run. I mean, my best finish is a fourth. We were on schedule for a fourth in '03 but ran out of fuel on the start/finish straightaway. You know, things could be a little bit better, but I feel I've got a better car this year than I had in previous years. We need to close the gap a little bit.

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: Well, we left the McDonald's car -- picked up the McDonald's car the way we left it last year. The balance is really good. I'm happy. Oriol is very fast, too. It was close during this run. I made a small mistake, but really not very far from what I was going to do. You know, just a very good feeling to be able to secure a front-row start like that. It's obviously extremely important to secure a front start position like that for us from now on, just to get the points we can. If we can grab a win, great. If we can't, we just move on and just think "championship." That's not part of the plan. But maybe.

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: I don't know. I don't know. I think just a bit of not luck but maybe good fortune because we've really run out of luck during the last two races here, had a differential failure in 2003, which really never happened, except when Oriol joined the team in Portland or something like that. No, it's been quite frustrating for us. Last year we had a very good car, dominated the weekend, and couldn't go home with anything with the incident with AJ. Hopefully we can bring it home this time and score big points. That's all we're asking for. Tomorrow, I don't exactly know what qualifying is going to look like, but I think the car is good. Just going to try to make it even better.

ORIOL SERVIA: Yeah, very good. The car is obviously good. Won last year here, my car, PacifiCare. Sebastien was leading easy. Obviously, Newman/Haas has pretty good setup here. They tend to figure out things quickly. Here is definitely good place. It's been good for me in the past. I don't want to be overconfident, but I have the feeling we're going to be in good shape. We are obviously I think 4/10ths clear of everybody else. It's very impressive for the team. Just happy. This morning, every time I had a good lap I finished, and I had the red flag, so didn't count. In qualifying, I had a good lap the last lap that I thought looked like was going to beat Sebastien, but ran out of fuel in the last corner, so I had to stop. But it's okay. I mean, I'm happy that the car is good. I still have tomorrow and Sunday. Things are going well. Very happy. Hopefully we're going to be on the podium again.

ORIOL SERVIA: Oh, for sure. I mean, I'm only 9/100ths behind, so for sure was. As I said, the last lap was going to be faster than that. Car was good. From here we just need to keep working for qualifying, but also for the race because it is quite a tough race on the tires. The new concrete areas makes it a little more funny out there. But, you know, obviously doing a good job. Sebastien is up there comfortable in the championship. I'm catching PT. It's making it interesting for the fans. We'll see what happens on Sunday.

PAUL TRACY: Well, I mean, it's just simple mathematics: we have to win and Sebastien has to have some trouble. It didn't go that way today, but we have to keep pushing. You know, the bottom line is we have to score as maximum amount of points as we can, out-score Sebastien by quite a lot. It's going to be -- it's not going to be easy. It's going to be hard work. But that's what we're here to do, to try to do that.

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: We're going to be far away this year just because of these concrete patches and also because of the new design of the fast chicane. You just have to go around these big curves something like 15, 20 miles slower than it used to be. There's going to be some definite big gap between the performance of last year and this year. But I don't know what was left in it. It's just extremely difficult to evaluate how much the track is going to pick up between one run and another. I just don't know. I know I made a small mistake, probably 2/10ths of a second. You know, we'll see tomorrow what the performance is like.

PAUL TRACY: I think if you look at the qualifying from F1 from previous years, I think the lap record is 11 or 12. They were 15s this year.

PAUL TRACY: Big change in the track, too. Obviously, they've been pretty close in terms of speed everywhere else where they go. Yesterday Montoya broke the lap record at Monza. The car is not much slower than it used to be. The performance of our car is down to the track surface, the concrete, the chicanes are slightly slower.

ORIOL SERVIA: We're going to see improvement like any other car, 4 or 5/10ths, maybe a little bit more, but not huge.

ORIOL SERVIA: Protect?

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: Are you kidding me? He's trying to kick my ass (laughter).

ORIOL SERVIA: My sponsor wants to win here (laughter).

I want to do the best I can. I think in the past, between teammates, you don't try to screw each other, obviously. You help each other. If he wants to have a bigger lead on Paul or me or whoever, and I want to be up front... But, you know, I think we have to use common sense. You know, first I have to beat PT in the points. I'm joking, but PT's always up there, and he's going to be up there every race. It's going to be a tough, tough race just to do that. I have to have everything in mind. There's still five races to go. We're all feeling it's close to the end, but there's still a lot. It's third in the championship still. Still a lot.

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: A big mess (laughter).

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: Well, obviously I think it's been a long while. Yeah, what was it last time, like Elkhart 2003 I think is the last race we had in the rain conditions. That was kind an event.

ORIOL SERVIA: I don't remember (laughter).

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: It's extremely difficult here. You have walls on both sides of the track. It's quite a tight asphalt. It's probably going to stay on top of it. The speed is high, so the water is going to go extremely high, too. Just past second place, probably nowhere to see anything. So you can expect quite a few incidents to happen if it does rain.

ORIOL SERVIA: I'm just sorry for the fans. The fans here are always great. They come, especially Sunday, have big crowds. If it rains, people get wet, nobody likes that. But hope it stays dry.

PAUL TRACY: Yeah, I think the same for me. Obviously, we want it dry. But I think the rain tire this year is a better tire than we've had in years past. It's much softer. We'll wait and see what happens for Sunday.

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: I guess if he's been cleared, there's probably no injury.

PAUL TRACY: I'm not disappointed. Obviously, it's a long race and anything can happen. Proof of that is last week. We have to go out and just push all the time and hope for the best. If it happens, it happens. But we're not going to give up and coast through the rest of the season. We want to try to win some more races. At the end of the day, if it happens for us, then that's great.

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: I don't know. I think it's a tough course. I think qualifying setup and race setup is significantly different here. I know we're going to have the speed. It's all about being conservative enough so you don't wear out the tires halfway through the first stint and things like that. We just need to be on top of our game. It's obviously the case right now, we need to keep on doing that.