It was an angry Paul Tracy that left Surfers' Paradise on Sunday, the Canadian believing that he had been the victim of some unpredictable officiating during the Lexmark Indy 300, and the possible fall-guy for a ruse to please the home town crowd. source: crash.net After salvaging a second row spot in qualifying, Tracy was running with early leaders Will Power and Sebastien Bourdais on the streets of the Australian resort, but made contact with Power's Team Australia car while exiting the pits after his first stop. The collision cut a tyre which forced the Canadian to make a second stop, putting himself out of sequence with the leaders. The change of strategy appeared to work in favour of the Forsythe driver, however, as he then managed to turn some very quick laps, including the best lap of the race, and work his way back to the front. Tracy was running second with only a handful of laps to go when he was assessed two different - and equally controversial - penalties by the officials, forcing him to concede two positions, and eventually miss the podium, as former team-mate Mario Dominguez and Team Australia's Alex Tagliani - another former Forsythe driver - were elevated a place apiece. "I'm so p*ssed off with Champ Car and it's officiating, I can't even describe how upset I am," the series veteran fumed after the race.'' "During the two incidents with Mario [Dominguez], I was avoiding both of us crashing - and I get penalised and have to drop two positions because of it. Basically, you are damned if you do and damned if you don't - if you make contact, then they penalise you for that also.'' "And, as for what happened during the second incident at the chicane, I feel that it was just a fix to get one of the Team Australia cars up on the podium. I mean, it's so clear, it's ridiculous." Tracy was particularly aggrieved as he felt that the Forsythe team had worked hard to get itself into a podium position after a difficult afternoon that saw its title ambitions with AJ Allmendinger ended by a brush with the wall. "It's extremely frustrating because this was our race to win. We had a problem during the first pit-stop, when we touched with Will Power and cut a tyre, but the new strategy worked beautifully and we were right up at the front at the end. Then they took it from us."
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