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LONG BEACH, Calif. -- Oriol Servia started Saturday as a spectator and ended the day with a ride in the Champ Car World Series.
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"Well, this was obviously a surprise," the 32-year-old Spaniard said after replacing injured Paul Tracy in the No. 3 Forsythe Championship Racing entry at midday and qualifying 14th for Sunday's Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach just two hours later.
Tracy, the 2003 series Champ Car World Series champion and the winningest active driver, broke a vertebra in his lower back in a crash during Saturday morning's practice session. Team owner Gerald Forsythe immediately turned to Servia, a series veteran who lost his regular ride at the end of the 2006 season.
"I want to thank Jerry Forsythe and the Forsythe team for putting their trust in me and giving me this opportunity," said Servia, who has one win in 112 career starts dating to the 2000 season. "I've been preparing all off season mentally and physically and, although this is not the way I expected to get back into a Champ Car, I'm still very happy and very excited.
"Obviously, everything has been very last minute. I'm still just getting up to speed and figuring out the DP01 around this track. We managed to go quicker with every lap, but there's still a lot of speed left in the car. We just need more laps."
Everyone in the series is driving the new Panoz DP01 chassis this season, but it's not totally new to Servia, who did test the car in January with PKV Racing, the team he drove for in 2006.
"I'm still just barely figuring out the limits of the car under braking and just carrying a little bit more speed trough every corner every time," said Servia, who finished a career-best second in the season points in 2005 while driving for Newman/Haas Racing. "But we still have the warm-up session (Sunday morning) and, although we are starting the race from the back, I know the Forsythe Team will give me great pit stops and a great strategy so we should be OK for the race."
Tracy, still in pain from his injured back, returned to the track from the hospital and said he wishes Servia good luck.
"He has a really good car and a great team behind him and, hopefully, he can give the team a good result," said Tracy, who isn't sure how long he will be sidelined.
Pro/celebrity race
Dave Mirra, a professional BMX rider and former MTV personality, drove away with Saturday's Toyota Pro/Celebrity race, beating former pro tennis star Martina Navratilova by 7.402-seconds.
Joshua Morros, a soap opera actor and professional poker player, was third, followed by the top pro, NASCAR's truck racer Mike Skinner.
The biggest crash of the eight-lap race came when movie producer-director George Lucas tried to pass a line of cars on the inside and collided with Annamarie Dean, who got into the race by making a large donation to charity. Lucas skidded into a tire wall and Dean also slid across the track and hit his car head-on. Neither driver was injured.
Horsey set
Jim Tafel could be excused Saturday if he was thinking about a different kind of horsepower as his team prepared his Porsche sports car for the American Le Mans Series race on the Long Beach circuit.
Tafel's father, James B. Tafel, is the owner of Street Sense, one of the early favorites for the upcoming Kentucky Derby. The horse finished second Saturday afternoon in the Blue Grass Stakes in Lexington, Ky., the final big test before the May 5 Kentucky Derby.
The younger Tafel's Porsche 911 sports the same blue and yellow as his father's silks, but the driving member of the family said that is just coincidental.
"My dad chose those colors because he went to Pitt during World War II," Tafel said. "I went to Florida State, but those colors are just fine with me. I'm happy to represent my dad and his horses. He's passionate about horse racing like I am about sports car racing."
Tafel had a premonition that Street Sense, whose name has nothing to do with auto racing, might come up short - by a nose, as it happens - in Saturday's race.
"The main thing is for the horse to be on its game for May 5," he said. "If it doesn't win today, it's not the worst thing. You don't want to lay all your cards on the table and overwork it.
"He just has to come out physically in top shape."
