Crash puts Tracy, team, behind 8-ball

The Forsythe Team had a bumpy start to the weekend at the Mazda Champ Car Grand Prix of Portland Presented by Joe’s Sports & Outdoor as Oriol Servia and Paul Tracy qualified provisionally in the 11th and 13th position. Servia, who will make his third start with the Team, worked with his engineers during the day to improve the balance of his DP01 Champ Car at the slippery 12-turn road course, but limited on track time has proven to be a disadvantage as most of the other teams were able to participate in a two day test with the new chassis in May and have had more laps to tweak their setup. Tracy has also lacked seat time after missing the last two races due to an injury and today’s events didn’t help that situation as a morning practice accident forced him to switch to his backup car, which in turn had electrical problems leaving the 2003 Champion time to complete only 15 total laps during the day.

Oriol Servia
“It’s good to be back in the car, it’s been a very long break. It actually took me a few laps to get back into the rhythm of things; once we got up to speed we started working on the setup of the car. In this track you have to be very precise and you have to be able to flow a lot of speed through the corners. When your balance isn’t right it really hurts the lap time. This Forsythe Team always manages to catch up when they are behind so I have no doubt that tomorrow when we hit the track for practice we’ll be much better. Most of the teams have tested here so they are close to where they’ll be for the whole weekend; we still have a lot of time left in the car so things could turn out pretty good tomorrow."

Paul Tracy
“Well today was pretty much a disaster, it’s definitely no the way I wanted to get back. In the morning I was just coming out of the pits with cold tires and I made a mistake and hit the wall, so my guys hustled to get the backup car ready but Champ Car rules don’t allow running two cars in the same session so we had to wait until qualifying to get our first laps in. Then during the short pre-qualifying practice session we had electrical problems with our car and didn’t get to do any laps either. Once I finally got out for qualifying the car was all over the place. Most of the teams tested here so they have the track and the car figured out, we are still trying to catch up. We are struggling with the balance of the car; we still have a lot of work to do."