Houston Race
PT 2ND IN GRAND PRIX OF HOUSTON
HOUSTON, Texas โ May 13, 2006 – From starting P3 Paul ran fast throughout the first laps of the race behind teamate Mario and rival Bourdais. After a number of green flag laps PT went to put a move on Bourdais and was quite obviously blocked. Bourdais was given a warning by Champ Car Officials but was issued no penalty. A little later, leader Dominguez somehow missed a turn and headed into the run-off area allowing Bourdais the lead and PT second place. With a race full of yellow flags it came down to a timed race which left a green, white, checker situation for PT with only one lap to try and overtake Bourdais. Unfortunately this was not enough. Paul had at the drop of the last green flag more than twice the push-to-pass time on his car than did Bourdais but with only one lap left his conservation throughout the race would not be enough to overtake for the lead. PT finished 2nd with Mario in P3.
PT completed 96 laps (total laps for race due to timed race) in a time of 1:59:58.259 at an average speed of 81.140 MPH.
Paul: โI think it went well. Obviously we weren’t the fastest car on the track, but it was a steady night for us. The car was balanced pretty well, just a tick off of Mario and a tick off of Sebastien. You know, the middle part of the race was probably the most interesting for me when Sebastien was on reds, Mario was on blacks, I was on blacks. It seemed that Mario, we were both quicker in that stint. I was able to stay a lot closer to Sebastien on blacks, and the car felt better on the blacks than it did on the reds. The times had picked up from the first stint. Then when we switched over to the reds for the end of the race, Sebastien was on blacks, it just seems like his car became more consistent and my car became harder to drive. A little bit more oversteery. I just kind of settled into knowing that we needed to get points and come away with a second.โ