Over the weekend Paul Tracy confirmed he will run a partial schedule this season in the IZOD IndyCar Series.
Tracy has concluded a five-race deal with the newly restructured Dragon Racing, owned and operated by Jay Penske, son of Roger Penske. The first race is the upcoming Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach on April 17, where Tracy will compete with backing from Motegi Racing and Wheel Pros.
‘The Thrill From West Hill’ has been without a full-time ride since the final year of Champ Car World Series competition in 2007 when he drove for Forsythe Racing. Since unification of North American open-wheel racing in 2008, Tracy has only competed in a handful of races, mostly for KV Racing Technology-Lotus. He made five starts last year; two for KVRT-Lotus and three for Dreyer & Reinbold Racing.
Late last month he announced that he will race in the Indianapolis 500 for Dreyer & Reinbold with primary sponsorship from Wix Filters.
De Ferran Dragon Racing closed its doors in late February after it was unable to secure enough sponsorship for Tony Kanaan who had signed on for a full-season deal last December. Penske has been working with Tracy to revive the team ever since.
"We've been trying to put this deal together with Jay from soon after he and Gil de Ferran split," Tracy told RACER Magazine. “Jay flew to Vegas to meet me, and said “OK, let's go to work on this,” but obviously it was a short space of time to put together a whole season. And then a couple of things we were trying to put together fell through, because of timing and because of stuff that happened that was just out of our control."
In addition to Long Beach, Tracy’s schedule with Dragon includes the doubleheader at Texas (June 11), Toronto (July 10), Edmonton (July 24) and Infineon (August 28). Tracy has indicated that more races could be added if additional sponsorship materializes.
