©1998 SpeedCenter Internet Publishing, Inc.
By Mike Rutsey, with photo and comment by Peter Burke
Alex Zanardi may be pulling away in the CART driver standings,but the battle between Paul Tracy and Christian Fittipaldi isjust heating up.
Tracy bumped Fittipaldi in Sunday's Detroit Grand Prix, knockingFittipaldi out of the race. Afterward, Fittipaldi came gunningfor Tracy and accused the Canadian driver of being a hazard onthe track.
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to cool down the situation |
"He came down to my pit after the race and wanted to have a fistfight," Tracy said yesterday at a promotion for one of his newsponsors, Data Recovery. "He was really hot-tempered.
"I apologized to him because I bumped him and he didn't want toaccept it. Instead he had all of his guys holding him back (fromtaking a swing)*. It's one of those things that happen. You wantto get past it and get on to the next race."
Although the two never came to blows, Fittipaldi got in plentyof verbal shots.
"We were just hanging in there running in ninth place andTracy nudged me over when he tried to pass me," Fittipaldisaid. "Three times out of the past five races, Tracy and Ihave come in contact. I realize that St. Louis wasn'tintentional as he hit me when he was spinning, but heis taking some unnecessary risks.
"I hope CART does something about his driving."
Tracy wasn't thrilled by Fittipaldi's comments.
"It bugs me a little bit because the move he made atLong Beach — where we locked wheels and I went flyingin the air and went upside down — he fails to remember thatone," Tracy said. "I made a mistake (Sunday), we bumped tires,he ended up spinning. He didn't hit anything, just stalled themotor.
"I think he's just venting frustration because he's had a fairlypoor year and some mighty accidents and hasn't finished any races."
Tracy said that if a feud exists, it's strictly one of Fittipaldi'smaking.
"There's no feud from my side," Tracy said. "I don't know if hewants to create a feud. I'm out there to race and hopefully he'llbe level-headed enough to get on with the rest of the season forhimself."
Tracy and Fittipaldi will square off again June 21 at theBudweiser/G.I. Joe's 200 in Portland, Ore., followed by the July 12Grand Prix of Cleveland. Tracy gets to meet his rival on his homecourse in the Molson Indy, July 19.
By then, Tracy hopes to have smoothed out wrinkles in his TeamKool Green machine.
"We've had some really bad luck and I've made a couple of mistakesand the team has made some mistakes on the pit stops," Tracy said."That's part of the learning process (with a new team).
"We've had our frustrations but at the end of the day we've alwayshad a good car on race day and have been able to challenge and movetoward the front. My understanding of the car needs to be better. It'sup to the driver to call the shots."
When he meets Fittipaldi on the course again, he hopes he's nottrading them as well.
* Photographer's footnote: To offset the slightly Canadianpoint of view of this article, I would like to add a few comments myself:
If anyone was holding back Christian, it was not "his guys," but Barry Green - Christian's father Wilson,his PR man Fernando and several CART officials did not physically interfere as the photo clearly shows(I have more to prove my point).
Here's my view of what happened: Christian left his pit where his team tried to stop him, but theyquickly realized there was no way to do anything about it and simply followed him to Tracy's pit to possibly avoid something too embarrassing (that's when I noticed what was going on, and followed them).However, Christian never came close to "punching" anyone, and after only a few rather loud words directed at Paul,he left the area, followed by "his guys." And, one more fact that seems to have escaped Tracy's attention and was leftunquestioned by the above author: Christian has finished races, and he isjust 16 points behind the driver of the #26 car, who, one might argue, himself has had some rather frustrating days and wrecks this season...
Christian's Brazilian temper just brought it all to the surface (and I bet the fans are eating it all up - finally news that's not all plastic and cannedPR material; one may wonder if these guys beenfollowing F1 and how they entertain the masses with mostly human drama and "lashing out" at eachother, rather than good racing?) Clearly, Christian should have chosen other channels to resolve his frustration, while Paul may be inflating what really happened in some of the above statements.
Source: Canada Online used by permission
