Canada's Paul Tracy of Dragon Racing checks out the new race track before his first practice run at the Edmonton Indy in Edmonton, Alberta, July 23, 2011.
The mornings began before the sun was even up. Every day during summer break, Paul Tracy's dad would get his son out of bed, pile him into his pickup truck and drive him off to the local race track. They had to be there early, so Tony Tracy could be at work by six.
At the track, Tony would put a $5 bill in his son's hand, a can of gasoline in the other, and send seven-year-old Paul off to race go-karts for the day. Lap after lap, he would do turns around the track until his head was spinning. Then, at around dinner time, Tony came back to pick up his son, crusted in dirt, sweat and paint from a long day in the contracting business.
For much of his formative years, Paul Tracy, one of the most successful professional race car drivers Canada has produced, was babysat at the track. Racing looked after him.
"The owner of the track would sort of keep an eye on me to make sure I didn't get into trouble, and I would just drive all day," Tracy says. "You can't do that now. As a parent, you'd get arrested for it."
The summer of 1976 was a simpler time, for racing anyway. All Tracy needed back then to hone his racing skills was a few bucks for lunch, some gas and a go-kart.
Today, the sport of auto racing has changed dramatically, and it's the lowest ranks where drivers are first introduced to the sport that have arguably undergone the biggest transformation. Tracy's not sure he even recognizes the sport now.
"It's a hard-core, serious, big-bucks deal these days," he says. "It's just totally different now. It's a full-on show."
The show Tracy is referring to in this particular instance is the Las Vegas Super Nationals, held each November in the sprawling parking lot of the Rio Hotel in the Nevada desert. Known as the Indy 500 of kids racing, it is the most anticipated event of the year, drawing talent scouts and top go-kart drivers from across North America and Europe, each of them vying to one day race in places like Monaco, Interlagos or Daytona.
It is an exclusive scene, and there is money everywhere you turn.
A squad of kids from Mexico, decked out in matching lime green racing suits, have brought with them a full-fledged racing paddock, complete with large tents, semi-trailers and a working garage that would rival any professional outfit. The tools are spotless and glisten in the sun as the mechanics work away.
But the team of Mexican drivers isn't the only such setup. The track is lined with paddock after paddock of high-tech garages equipped with professional mechanics, luxury trailers and catered food. And when the crowd outside parts, no one finds it unusual to spot a sleek Bugatti Veyron creeping slowly through the mass of people. Its sticker price: about $2.4-million, one of the most expensive cars in the world.
"The scene now is all very professional," Tracy says of the junior racing circuit he once competed on, learning how to advance up the ranks. "It's not beyond the realm to see guys spending $300,000 to $400,000 on go-kart racing."
This is not the sport Tracy remembers when he began racing as a youngster growing up in Scarborough, Ont., with dreams of making the jump to professional racing as soon as he could get a driver's licence. Back then, the sport was more accessible. If Tracy had to get his start in today's world, he admits he probably couldn't.
"My dad had a contracting company, and the company was doing well. But times were different then, it wasn't as expensive as it is now," he says. "We'd go in the back of my dad's pickup truck to races. Now these kids are 9 years old and they're showing up with a semi, like a 40-foot trailer. For an 8 and 9 year old."
Tony's contracting business always seemed to be able to fund his son's hobby. But Tracy says he never lived the high-life as a young racing talent. Nor did he have a team of specialists working on his engine.
Tony had rules: if Paul wanted to race, he was expected to be his own mechanic.
"It was my job to make sure the go-kart was ready, cleaned, the engine was rebuilt, new tires mounted, set up, and ready to go by Saturday for the race on Sunday afternoon."
"I came home from school, I went in the garage and prepared the kart for the next weekend. I'd rebuild the motor and put new tires on … and if it wasn't ready, we weren't going."
Without fail, the work was always done. "I see the differences now between the way it was when I drove, these kids don't even touch the karts any more, they don't get their hands dirty."
Tracy parlayed his childhood acumen on the track into success as a pro. After narrowly missing a win at the Indianapolis 500 in 2002, Tracy won the 2003 Champ Car series title, which later became IndyCar.
Canada has always demonstrated a propensity for producing world class drivers – from Gilles and Jacques Villeneuve in Formula One, to Scott Goodyear and Tracy in IndyCar, and NASCAR's Ron Fellows, if only to name a few – but dramatic changes to the sport's developmental ranks are having an effect.
Racing has always required money. But it's no longer a sport for simply the well-off, it is a pastime for the undeniably rich. Tony bankrolled much of his son's early career, footing the bill until Paul could latch on to a pro team.
But if he were to add up the price of becoming a pro driver, Tracy figures it probably cost his dad a few million dollars.
"For a lot of drivers that came up like myself – my dad was a painter for a living – it wasn't all laid out, we had to make the path ourselves through the woods," Tracy said.
"My dad just worked like a slave. He's still working now."
When Tracy couldn't get on with a pro team at 23, his father wrote a cheque for $105,000 to cover the costs for him to race, using money from the business.
These days, sponsorship dollars have also become scarce. One of the biggest blows to racing's developmental ranks, Tracy says, came when tobacco sponsorships were banned nearly a decade ago, and effectively shut off the funding for driving programs responsible for bringing along respected names like Jacques Villeneuve up through the ranks.
This was always racing's quiet compromise in Canada – the sport relied heavily on tobacco money to develop its young drivers, but that funding was bound to run out when the laws against cigarette advertising changed. With that money no longer available, not enough major sponsors have come in to fill the void, Tracy says. Drivers must be mostly self-funded.
That leaves the sport to kids like Lance Stroll, whose families can fund their rise through the ranks independently. One of Canada's top young drivers, 13-year-old Stroll from Montreal may have the best shot financially at making the pro ranks if his talent can hold up beyond his teen years.
Last year, Stroll became the youngest driver signed to an F1 team when Ferrari added him to its Driver Academy, where nascent talent is developed, when he was still only 11. Ferrari will pay for his training over the next several years. But beyond that Stroll's father is also wealthy enough to fund the costs of racing.
Money alone can't produce a successful driver, since winning is what matters most, Tracy says. But funding and talent together are a powerful combination.
"The cream always rises to the top, the good drivers always seem to win regardless of what equipment they are in," he says. "They've got a lot of money behind [Stroll] there's no shortage of cash flow, so that's a huge help for him. It's whether the kid wants to fulfill what he has in front of him, because he has every opportunity if he wants to do it."
Across the professional racing world, there are signs Canada's top drivers are having to battle financially.
Toronto-born F1 driver Robert Wickens won the Formula Renault 3.5 Series this year, a developmental circuit that feeds drivers into Formula One, and is now trying to crack the rarified ranks of F1. If he can make it onto the grid, he would be the first Canadian in F1 since Jacques Villeneuve. Bringing loads of sponsorship money to the table, as many drivers do, would dramatically help his cause.
In similar fashion, James Hinchcliffe of Oakville, Ont., took rookie of the year honours on the IndyCar circuit this year at age 24, but found out this month his team – the venerable Newman Haas Racing, which the late actor Paul Newman helped create – was folding amid financial difficulties. Hinchcliffe now finds himself searching for a new team to call home.
Now looking back on his career, Tracy sees himself in a similar predicament. He is 43, and the opportunities are drying up.
"The sand in the hour glass is starting to run out now," Tracy says. "It doesn't get any easier when you don't drive that often."
He is effectively a man without a regular team. A driver capable of winning races a decade ago who can't find a paddock to call home. He picks up a few races here and there, but nothing steady.
By pro racing standards, he is living a hand-to-mouth existence, mirroring in some ways how he came into racing, having to scrape buy until the door finally opened.
He's got other projects: he did a reality show on cable where he puts exotic sports cars through their paces, but production was recently suspended. Nothing is quite like racing. "I do the best I can," he says.
As the sport changes, Tracy thinks back to the days when his dad dropped him off at the track, remembering them fondly. It was a simpler time in racing.
"There was always pressure to win because we didn't go to the racetrack to lose," Tracy admits. "But at the end of the day we had a lot of fun. We had great times. I wouldn't have traded it for anything."