Friday, March 19, 1999 | 10:45 a.m.
Last summer on his way to breaking Roger Maris' single-season home run record, St. Louis Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire hit everything that moved.
So did Paul Tracy. But when you make your living driving high-tech race cars at speeds approaching 230 mph, that's not always a good idea.
Tracy, the hard-charging Canadian who moved to Las Vegas early last year, endured a 1998 season on the Championship Auto Racing Teams circuit that can best be described as suspended animation.
He was suspended or being reprimanded for rough driving much of the time, and was quite animated about it.
"Obviously, there's been a lot (of accidents) that have been my fault," said the 30-year-old veteran, who will be watching from the pits Sunday when the CART teams open their season with the Marlboro Grand Prix of Miami at the Miami-Dade Homestead Motorsports Complex (1 p.m., Channel 13).
Tracy became the first driver in CART's 22-year history to be banished from a race when it was ruled he blocked and then collided with Michael Andretti during the Honda Indy in Australia last October.
Earlier last season, Tracy became the first driver in CART history to be banished from a qualifying session, for his part in an incident with Michel Jourdain Jr., during provisional qualifying at Portland, Ore.
There were 18 races last year, and Tracy was involved in incidents -- read: crashes -- in 10 of them. And he also nearly came to blows with his car owner, Barry Green, after Tracy clanged wheels with Dario Franchitti -- his teammate -- while they were running 1-2 at Houston. (Tracy and Green immediately made up and Green rewarded Tracy with a contract extension.)
"I always admit to my mistakes," said Tracy, who really does, a rarity in a sport where crashes usually are blamed on the other guy.
"I've crashed cars. I've had accidents. I ran into the back of Jourdain during practice; that was my fault. With Christian (Fittipaldi) in Detroit, I don't think it was my fault. (We touched) going 39 mph in a corner and he went into a half-spin. It's gone pretty equal, but I've been painted as the bad guy."
Put it this way: If CART had double-secret probation like in "Animal House," Tracy's name would be right under Bluto Blutarski's.
"The frustrating part of the whole thing is Wally (Dallenbach, the CART chief steward) is not tough on some guys and overly tough on others," Tracy said. "And it's not right to pull somebody out of a race at the start of a new season."
Tracy, who has 13 victories in 113 career starts in America's premier open-wheel series, is a threat to win this year's CART FedEx Series drivers championship, his bump-and-run season of 1998 notwithstanding. So taking a points donut in Florida -- veteran Raul Boesel will pinch-hit behind the wheel of Tracy's No. 26 Team Kool Green Reynard-Honda -- may wind up costing him dearly.
He said if CART wanted to sit him down for Road Rage, it should have done so at last year's season finale at Fontana, Calif.
That also would have spared Tracy the embarrassment of spinning out of the lead -- during a caution period, no less -- with just four laps to go in the Marlboro 500. That cost Tracy and his team a cool $1 million, the winner's purse that fellow Las Vegan Jimmy Vasser inherited.
But Dallenbach said he had his reasons for carrying over Tracy's penalty.
"In addition to the high risk of the move by Paul (in Australia), we reviewed his on-course incidents and penalties incurred throughout the season and felt a more stringent penalty was appropriate," he said.
Dallenbach wasn't the only one who had it in for Tracy last season. The other drivers started calling him "Captain Crunch." And when Tracy crashed out of the lead at Fontana, many in the crowd of 100,000 roared their approval, much as they do when Jeff Gordon or Dale Earnhardt falls from contention in a NASCAR Winston Cup race.
Whether he likes it or not, Tracy has become the bad boy of CART. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing for a series in transition that hopes to develop new stars, personalities and rivalries.
"Certainly, people don't want to watch race car drivers with vanilla personalities," CART CEO Andrew Craig said during a recent Las Vegas visit. "Paul's personality is not vanilla.
"I'm not going to make this the World Wrestling Federation of racing but what I am going to do is make sure our drivers who have strong and attractive personalities get the opportunity to express it."
Others, such as Michael Andretti, roll their eyes at the mention of Tracy's name.
"I think every series needs somebody like that -- but I don't know if Paul wants to be the guy," Andretti said.
Don't be so sure. In this year's Team Kool Green media guide, there are several photos of Tracy riding the custom Harley-Davidson motorcycles that he likes to build out of his Las Vegas garage. In other photos, he looks like a defiant beatnik.
Since leaving Roger Penske's high-profile operation prior to the 1998 season, Tracy has changed his image, sprouting facial hair while palling around with musicians from alternative rock groups such as Smashing Pumpkins, Smash Mouth and Metallica.
"It's probably my fault," said his wife, Liisa, during lunch at Las Vegas' trendy Grape Street Cafe. She was talking about her husband's transformation into "the Dennis Rodman of CART," as one of Tracy's crew members describes him.
"But I just wish more people would take time to find out what Paul's really like."
Indeed, Tracy is one of the most accessible drivers on the CART circuit. He never turns down an autograph request and the media loves him, because there isn't a question that you can't ask him or that he won't answer.
He said CART, which maintains a strong core of fans but is struggling for TV ratings following the advent of the Indy Racing League and the incredible growth of NASCAR, should be happy that aggressive drivers like himself and Alex Zanardi (the two-time series champ who has returned to Formula One) were around to bang wheels.
While the competition in CART has never been better, some of the tight street and road circuits aren't conducive to lead-swapping and wheel-to-wheel racing.
Unless Tracy is running near the front.
"I think for the sport to turn into a non-event, where everybody is running around single file and not attempting to make a pass (is wrong)," Tracy said. "In some ways, Alex and I are the ones putting on the show for our side of the sport which is losing (TV) ratings, and we're penalized for it.
"Who wants to watch a race where everybody is running around a couple of car lengths apart?"
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