CART boss denies talks of vendetta against championship leader
source: autosport.com
Champ Car President and CEO Chris Pook says that he has no vendetta against
championship leader Paul Tracy and that reports in the Canadian media of an
altercation between the two last week in the Cleveland pit lane were inaccurate.
Pook told representatives from the Forsythe team that he was unhappy that Tracy
wore shorts to a PR function at Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The CART
boss approached Tracy following preliminary qualifying the following day at
Cleveland last weekend to express his displeasure, and he was later admonished
by executives from team sponsor Player's cigarettes about the public nature of
his action.
"It's gotten completely blown out of proportion," Pook said Saturday
in Toronto. "(Paul) blew up for 30 seconds or a minute and that was it. It
was a one-way conversation. The problem is (the media) didn't see it. They
speculated, they were fed some information and it got blown into a full-on
controversy. They talked about pushing and shoving and all kind of crap, but
that's total fiction. It's totally in their imagination."
Tracy, who has emerged as the Champ Car series biggest star, has been shadowed
by controversy throughout his 13-year career. That 'bad boy' image was exactly
what Player's and Forsythe were looking for when they signed the 34-year old to
a multi-year contract.
"Paul is a colourful character, and he's also an extremely good racing
driver," Pook noted. "Like a lot of colourful athletes, from time to
time they step across the line pertaining to the rules of conduct that are
expected of them by their sanctioning body. It's not unlike a wayward kid.
"In the opinion of the CEO, he stepped across the line, so he got
admonished," Pook added. "It's beyond me how it got to that magnitude,
but maybe people were fanning the flames."