No hard feelings: Tracy back in IRL

Paul Tracy would just as soon forget the last time he drove in the Indy Racing League.

It was the Indianapolis 500 in 2002 while driving for Team Green of the CART series.

It was at the height of the battle between CART and the IRL for American open-wheel supremacy.

The only truce would occur when a few CART teams crossed over to be part of the Indy 500, the cornerstone of the IRL.

Late in the race it looked as if Tracy had fired a major blow for CART.

He was in the midst of passing Helio Castroneves for the lead on the next-to-last lap when a crash behind them brought out a caution flag. Tracy thought he had completed the pass that would have given him the prestigious victory, but race officials ruled he hadn’t gotten around the IRL’s Castroneves before the caution was declared.

Castroneves was declared the winner a few hours after the race. Tracy’s team owner, Barry Green, protested the call but lost an appeal of the ruling several weeks later.

Conspiracy theorists and CART supporters never expected IRL founder Tony George to rule against one of his drivers in favor of a CART regular.

But Tracy, saying “enough water’s passed under that bridge,” will compete in the Grand Prix of Edmonton this weekend, the first time he’s raced in the IRL since the controversial 500 six years ago. And he’ll be driving for Vision Racing, which George owns.

“I was over that the next week when I won at Milwaukee (in Champ Car),” Tracy said this week at a news conference at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. “I’ve won a lot of races since then, and I won the 2003 championship in Champ Car.”

Tracy, a Las Vegas resident, has been out of work since the Champ Car series — formerly CART — folded this year and conceded the open-wheel war to the IRL IndyCar series.

His only open-wheel race this year was the Long Beach Grand Prix, which was the last held with Champ Cars.

This is the first IndyCar race on the Edmonton street circuit, but the Ontario native finished in the top five all three times he raced on the course in Champ Car.

“You really have to be quick here to do well,” Tracy said of the 1.9-mile, 14-turn course. “From that standpoint, the car has got to be good here.”

He was seventh fastest among 27 cars in Thursday morning’s practice and eighth in the afternoon session. He will try to qualify today for Sunday’s race.

Tracy hopes Edmonton won’t be his only IRL race, but his only firm plan is to compete in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck event Sept. 20 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

• RACER OUTING — More than 20 race cars and drivers from the LVMS Bullring will be on display from 5 to 10 p.m. Saturday at Carluccio’s Tivoli Gardens restaurant at 1775 E. Tropicana Ave.

This is the last weekend of the Bullring’s July hiatus. Racing in the NASCAR All-American Series will return Aug. 2 with the rescheduled Keith Danser’s Candy Toss night.