WEST ALLIS, Wis. ? With the disputed finish of the Indianapolis 500 still very much on his mind, Paul Tracy left nothing to chance this time.

Tracy, who lost to Helio Castroneves at Indy a week earlier, dominated the Miller Lite 250 on Sunday, leading 184 of the 250 laps at the Milwaukee Mile.

“I’ve been very motivated since last week,” said Tracy, whose team owner, Barry Green, will announce Monday if he will file an appeal of his driver’s second-place finish at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

“I told my guys before this race, we haven’t won a race in a whole week and we’ve got to get the job done,” Tracy added, grinning.

As for the possible appeal, Tracy said, “Barry will make the decision tomorrow, but I’m pretty confident he’ll do what he has to do – fight it.”

The victory was the first for Tracy in a CART event since September of 2000 in Vancouver – a span of 28 races.

The Canadian driver took the lead for good on lap 180 on the 1.032-mile oval when defending race winner Kenny Brack made his final pit stop.

Adrian Fernandez, who was the fastest driver through most of the weekend and started from the pole, alongside Tracy, moved into second place at the same time, but never got close enough to challenge the winner.

With only 11 of the 19 starters running in the waning laps, Tracy was able to avoid traffic and keep a lead between a half second and 2 seconds. He eased off the throttle a bit near the end and finished 0.638-seconds ahead – about five car-lengths.

Fernandez, the only owner-driver in the Champ Car series, was happy about his runner-up finish, but complained about a sloppy start to the race when Tracy jumped out to a big lead before taking the green flag and the Mexican driver found himself fifth by the first turn.

“For me, it was absolutely out of control at the start,” Fernandez said. “Paul was in control and I didn’t want that to happen, so I backed off. I didn’t think they would start it that way.”

Fernandez said Jim Swintal, CART’s flagman, apologized to him after the race.

“He said that shouldn’t have happened. The pole-sitter should always set the pace. … I think that was the key to winning or losing the race because it’s so hard to pass here.”

Tracy’s team is arguing that he passed Castroneves at Indy a split second before a caution light blinked on and froze positions on the next-to-last lap of the race. Of Sunday’s start he said: “The green light was on. It was all green.

“I saw green last week and I saw green this week.”

The 33-year-old Tracy, who now has 19 CART FedEx Series victories, said this win has little to do with what happened at Indianapolis, especially considering that race is run by the rival Indy Racing League and has totally different engines and chassis.

As for his chances of having that loss overturned, he said, “It’s something only time will tell. If it ends up the way it is now, we still had a great race and a great show.”

Surprising Max Papis, driving for the underfunded Sigma Autosport team, got his second third-place finish of the season. He was followed by Christian Fittipaldi and Michel Jourdain, who now has finished in the top five in all four races in his first season with Team Rahal and took the season points lead.

Dario Franchitti, who came into the race with a two-point lead over Jourdain, got into the top part of the track and slid through pieces of tire rubber that had accumulated, hitting the wall on lap 189.

The Scot, who wound up 12th, was upset that CART, which cleaned the track following his accident, had not done so earlier.

“They should look at the track up there more,” Franchitti said.

Several other drivers, including Tora Takagi, rookie Townsend Bell, Scott Dixon and Mario Dominguez, either hit the wall or came close to it after getting off the racing line.

Sunday’s results gave Jourdain a 42-35 lead over Franchitti, with Tracy and Papis now tied for third at 32.

Brack and Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Bruno Junqueira both tried a different fuel strategy, pitting earlier than the other leaders near the midpoint of the race. The strategy backfired, though, when they got no timely caution flags and wound up falling back into the pack.

Brack finished eighth, the last car on the lead lap, and Junqueira a lap down in 10th.

Michael Andretti, a six-time Milwaukee winner, also appeared to have a shot at Tracy early, but spun on cold tires following a pit stop and never got back into contention. He finished seventh.