Toronto, July 14: Canada's Paul Tracy dominated the Toronto Grand Prix from start to finish to win his home town CART race for the first time in nine years. Tracy was on pole position on Sunday (July 13) and was never challenged in a flag-to-flag 112 lap win over Michel Jourdain of Mexico and Brazil's Bruno Junqueira. All three drove Lola/Ford Cosworths. A partisan crowd of more than 73,000 were out on a bright day to see outspoken series points leader Tracy, who had not won his home race since 1994. Sunday's result was never in doubt as even though Tracy's margin of victory was only 4.533 seconds he had built up a lead of just over half-a-minute before a late race caution bunched up the field of 19 drivers. It was Tracy's fourth victory of the year and his 16th in a career dating back to 1991. The victory means he has a 15-point lead over Junqueira and 26 over Jourdain. Tracy also overtook Al Unser Jr for third place in the all-time laps led in the series.


His sponsors, Players Tobacco, who helped develop other Canadian drivers like Jacques Villeneuve now with BAR/Honda in Formula One, announced on Thursday that they had to leave the sport due to anti-tobacco legislation, so emotions were high on Sunday.


The company will leave the CART series on October 1. Sebastien Bourdais of France, last weekend's winner in Cleveland, was fourth followed by Spain's Oriol Servia


Bureau Report