As related last night in his exclusive RACER blog, Paul Tracy is back in the IZOD IndyCar Series for more races, having signed a five-race deal with restructured Dragon Racing, starting with the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach on April 17, with backing from Motegi Racing and Wheel Pros.
The Canadian star has been without a full-time ride the past two seasons, making five starts last year, but had announced last month that he would run the Indianapolis 50 with Dreyer & Reinbold Racing.
De Ferran/Luczo Dragon Racing folded earlier this year after it was unable to secure enough sponsorship for Tony Kanaan, who had signed to run the full season with the team. However, team co-founder Jay Penske, son of Roger Penske, had been working with Tracy to reconstitute the team.
"We've been trying to put this deal together with Jay from soon after he and Gil de Ferran split," Tracy revealed in his RACER blog. 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 and the Dragon squad will run the doubleheader races at Texas, Toronto, Edmonton and Sonoma, although Tracy said that the team is continuing the hunt for additional sponsorship to run additional races.