source: slam.canoe.ca/
By DEAN McNULTY -- Toronto
Sun
There was a time during racing's off-season that Patrick Carpentier
wondered to himself if having Paul Tracy as a teammate was such a good thing.
After all, Carpentier had been the No. 1 driver for Player's/Forsythe
Racing ever since the accident that took the life of Vancouver's Greg Moore in
1999.
Carpentier, a 31-year-old native of Joliette, Que., had spent six of his
seven CART Champ Car World Series seasons driving for the Canadian-based team.
"Sure I was a little upset when the team brought Paul in,"
Carpentier said yesterday. "I had been through a tough year of negotiations
to get a new contract and then the team signs Paul and gives him everything he
wants."
Carpentier was fast friends off the track with his new Scarborough
teammate but, at the same time, he was coming off his best season with a pair of
victories in the team's Reynard chassis.
All of a sudden Tracy was demanding the team change wheels, so to speak,
to buy all new Lolas -- a car that Carpentier had no experience in whatsoever.
"At the start of the season I was still not so happy,"
Carpentier said. "But after the first four races we started to click and
since than it has been a great match."
Carpentier said that Tracy began sharing his experience in the Lola with
his new partner right away.
"There is a sincerity about our relationship," Carpentier said.