Walker wanted the win to prove something

Racing is his business. He is not independently wealthy. But for most of the 34th Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, Derrick Walker watched his green-and-gold car follow the green-and-gold car driven by eventual winner Will Power.

Those familiar colors were the trademark livery of Walker’s Team Australia a year ago. Today, they are part of a Champ Car World Series soap opera. Power raced last year for Walker and partner Craig Gore for Team Australia with Gore’s Aussie Vineyards as sponsor. It was Walker who created the Team Australia concept, and Power won two races. This year, Gore took his sponsorship, and Power, to another team owned by Kevin Kalkhoven and Jimmy Vasser.

Walker and Gore are locked in a legal wrangle, but basically Gore claims Walker breached his contract, and Walker claims Gore never paid him.

Walker, in his 40th year of racing and 17th in Champ Car, was left without sponsorship just weeks before the season began. One day he had planned to have two cars in the IndyCar Series, the next he was out of major open-wheel racing except for the Champ Car World Series’ swan song at Long Beach. Had Walker ever wanted one of his drivers to pass for the lead as badly as he wanted Alex Tagliani to beat Power to the finish line?

“If you’re a racer, you always want to have that pass to win, and whenever you have an opportunity with a car this good, you want to win and make that pass,” Walker said. “But I know what your question means, and yeah, this is the win I wanted to have. We had something to prove.”

Tagliani had qualified second and produced some of the sharpest comments of the weekend leading up to the race when discussing the treatment of Walker, 63. “I wanted to win that race so bad,” Tagliani said afterward. “I wanted to win so bad for Derrick and the team. We had everything to get it done. We thought the reds would be the edge we needed to get it done.”

Tagliani ran second to Power for 55 laps, but the pivotal moment came when the Canadian driver pitted on Lap 57 to put on softer, faster tires commonly marked by having red on the sidewalls. “We thought the red tires would be the best combination for our car because we had that indication from earlier in the race,” Walker said. “Unfortunately, the red tires proved to be too fragile and they went away on us. We were struggling in the corners and not enough power down the straights. We were a sitting duck for the last 20 laps.

“It’s a credit to Alex to hang on that long and not drop further down the pack than seventh.”

Tagliani, who joined the team nine days ago, was passed by Franck Montagny on Lap 69, and dropped four more places over the final seven laps.

If a seat doesn’t open up in open wheel, Tagliani will do some racing in NASCAR Canada but would like to find a ride in American Le Mans or Rolex Grand-American.

Walker will continue to run two cars in the Mazda Atlantic Series for Greg and Leo Mansell, sons of former Formula One and CART champion Nigel Mansell. They finished 13th and 19th, respectively, at Long Beach.

Walker says about 90% of his time is spent beating the bushes for sponsors with an eye on next month’s Indianapolis 500 or the 2009 IndyCar season. He has an arrangement with another team to field a car next month at Indy, but he must produce the money to make it happen.

“We were hoping today we were the little team that could, that would pull off the miracle with a small group of people taking on the millionaires and billionaires on pit lane and beating them at their own game,” Walker said. “Unfortunately, we’ll have to come back and try another day.”

martin.henderson@latimes.com