RACE REPORT.(Competitions of car racing)

Make no mistake, Paul Tracy knows he wasn't supposed to win the Grand Prix of Cleveland, not after crashing with rookie Graham Rahal, which required a pit stop and a new front wing on his car, then crashing with Bruno Junqueira, which required another pit stop, another new front wing.

But in the end, it was Forsythe Racing's Tracy-with his third front wing-who was first under the checkered flag.

"Today was by no means a nice, comfortable, easy, pretty win,'' Tracy said. "It was ugly. It was messy. It's not the way I would have liked to have won the race.''

But he'll take it, the 31st of his career but the first since he won here in 2005. It goes a long way toward redeeming his season-Tracy missed the second and third races after injuring his back in a practice crash-and it gives him momentum where he and Champ Car need it most, right before the series moves to Tracy's native Canada for the next three races.

Cleveland started out like most Champ Car races, with points leader and current champion Sebastien Bourdais on the pole and leading the first 27 laps, until Team Australia driver Will Power, the third-fastest qualifier, took over the lead when Newman-Haas-Lanigan driver Bourdais pitted. Power's Team Australia teammate, rookie Simon Pagenaud, was the second-fastest qualifier, and both were fast all day, though a flat tire ruined Power's race.

Despite the early collision with Tracy, Rahal's car wasn't damaged, but the required pit stop put Rahal on an alternative pit strategy that put him in the lead for four laps. But Tracy was also on an alternative pit strategy, and though he didn't have the fastest car-he was fifth-fastest-he cycled through the field to the lead on lap 70 and managed to stay in the lead, on worn-out tires, for the final 19 laps. Rahal, running second, had to stop late for a splash of fuel, leaving Team Minardi's Robert Doornbos and PKV Racing's Neel Jani to try to run down Tracy.

At the end of the one-hour, 45-minute race, Doornbos was just a half-second behind the struggling Tracy, and telemetry showed that Doornbos still had 35 seconds of "push to pass'' time, which adds 50 hp in brief intervals for a total of 60 seconds per race. So why didn't he use it on that last lap? Because the telemetry was wrong, and he had long since used all 60 seconds. How could he be sure? "I'd been pressing the button really, really hard, and nothing was coming out,'' he said.