Patrick Carpentier

Carpentier started 21st in the Dave Jacobs Racing car and finished sixth.

Patrick Carpentier (born August 13, 1971) is a retired Canadian professional auto racing driver.

For Carpentier, this first CART win finally arrived in his 79th start.

The following season, he would win twice, Marconi Grand Prix of Cleveland, and Grand Prix of Mid-Ohio and would take third in the championship standing.

He joined Lynx Racing in 1995, whereby he won his first-ever race for the team around the streets of Bicentennial Park (Miami).

He won again on the Nazareth Speedway oval, however the remainder of the season was marked by a variety of mechanical problems.

1996 was a whole different story.

During the course of the Player's Toyota Atlantic Championship, he would shatter every record in the 25-year history of the championship, including nine wins out of 12 races – eight of them in a row, from pole position.

He rewrote the record book for this series, setting a new record for the most consecutive wins(8), most wins in a season (9), also most consecutive wins from pole (8), most laps led in a season and most accumulated points in a season (239pts).

This included a flag-to-flag victory at the Grand Prix Molson du Canada meeting.

After shattering Gilles Villeneuve's long standing records, his 1996 Atlantic season propelled him to the major league Indycar series.

After winning the 1996 Player's Toyota Atlantic Championship, Carpentier won a ride with Bettenhausen/Alumax team in CART, defeating several veteran racers from across the US and Europe, in a test held at Sebring.

He debuted in CART in 1997 with Bettenhausen/Alumax team.

In that first season, he was on pole at Nazareth, with a best finish was second at the inaugural race at Gateway, the Motorola 300.

He would also be crowned "Rookie of the Year".

In 1998, he started driving for Player's Forsythe Racing, when the team expanded their operations to run a second alongside fellow Canadian, Greg Moore.

At the end of the following season, with the unfortunate death of Moore, in season finale, the Marlboro 500 at Fontana, Carpentier became Forsythe's number one, when rookie Alex Tagliani was brought into the squad, keeping it an all-Canadian affair.

In his early years he was prone to missing races through injuries, some of which originated off-track.

Patrick Carpentier started into Formula Ford 2000 Canada, before moving up to Player's Toyota Atlantic Championship in 1992.

His first Champ Car victory came in 2001 in the Harrah's 500, at the Michigan International Speedway, and would finish tenth in the overall end of year standing.

In what was the last CART sanctioned Michigan 500, he seized victory with a dramatic last-lap pass of Dario Franchitti.

In the Champ Car World Series and the IndyCar Series, he achieved five wins and 24 podiums, as well as two third place championship finishes in 2002 and 2004.

Carpentier was 5th overall in a disappointing 2003 season, despite winning the Grand Prix of Monterey, at the Laguna Seca (compared to title-winning teammate Paul Tracy).

Tracy's performance weakened Carpentier's position within the team and rumours circulating pre-2004 season suggesting Carpentier would be dropped by Forsythe Racing, in favour of Rodolfo Lavin.

Instead, Gerald Forsythe decided to run a third car for Lavin.

Allegedly, Patrick kept his ride because of his marketing popularity in his homeland.

He would repay Forsythe by retaining the Grand Prix of Monterey.

Despite finishing higher than Paul Tracy in the 2004 championship, Carpentier left the team and the series for the 2005 season, joining Eddie Cheever's Cheever Racing in the IndyCar Series.

Due to his excellent record on oval tracks he was expected to do well (most of the IndyCar Series races are on ovals which had become virtually extinct in Champ Car), but uncompetitive Toyota engines prevented any major success.

The long-time Champ Car driver switched to the IndyCar Series in 2005, and moved on to Grand Am Road Racing in 2007.

The 2005 season would be Carpentier's last in open-wheel competition.

Shortly after the end of his IndyCar career, Carpentier drove a Crawford-Lexus DP03 for former boss Eddie Cheever in the 2006 Rolex 24 at Daytona.

He then competed in the 2006 CASCAR Super Series event at Cayuga Speedway.

After a few NASCAR races in 2007, he moved full-time into the series in 2008.

Since 2009, he has only had part-time drives, so became a contractor and renovator in Montreal, trading in real estate in Las Vegas, as well as being a color commentator for television coverage of various racing series.

He last competed part-time in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, driving the No. 32 Ford Fusion for Go FAS Racing.

Carpentier is now the president of a home construction firm in Quebec.

He ended 10th in the standings with two third places and 11 top 10s out of 17 races.

In a 2016 interview, the Canadian acknowledged he had decided to retire after seeing Ryan Briscoe's crash into the catchfence at the Chicagoland race; other major IRL crashes like the one suffered by Kenny Bräck in the 2003 finale at Texas also played a role in his decision.

In his nine years as a competitor in CART and IRL's IndyCar, Carpentier finished in the top 10 85 times, and stood on the podium 24 times.