Toronto ? Cristiano da Matta wasn’t happy when Juan Montoya was dominating the CART series four years ago.

“The other drivers got mad that Montoya was winning all those races,” da Matta said Sunday after winning the Toronto Molson-Indy, tying the series record of four consecutive victories and extending his points lead.

Cristiano Da Matta waves during his victory lap. Da Matta won the CART Molson-Indy race on Sunday in Toronto.

Montoya, now in Formula One, won seven of 20 races, twice winning three in a row, and also took the championship that season.

“Now I’m on the other side and it feels good,” da Matta said, grinning.

The Brazilian driver started from the pole and led all 112 laps on the 1.755-mile, 11-turn temporary street course. He was virtually unchallenged, building leads of up to 12 seconds and driving his Toyota-powered Lola across the finish line 4.398 seconds about half a straightaway ahead of Kenny Brack.

“The Newman-Haas team is just working well together right now,” da Matta said. “We’re just collecting the fruits that have been growing since last year.”

Only once did the 28-year-old da Matta feel pushed.

“On the last restart when I had Kenny right behind me,” he said. “Before that, there were always lapped cars between me and the second-place car on the restarts.”

It was no contest as da Matta steadily pulled away from Brack’s Lola-Toyota after the green flag waved for the start of lap 96. He built the lead to 41/2 seconds by lap 107 and cruised the rest of the way.

Brack, with his best showing of the season, finished just ahead of Christian Fittipaldi, da Matta’s teammate on the team co-owned by actor-racer Paul Newman and Chicago businessman Carl Haas.

“I thought maybe we could get him when we had those two late restarts, but he was just quicker,” Brack said. “Obviously, Cristiano is on a roll.”

The victory was da Matta’s fifth of the season and seventh in the last 10 races. The four straight wins match the CART record set in 1990 by Al Unser Jr. and equaled in 1998 by Alex Zanardi.

Toronto has been a part of each of those streaks, with Unser’s starting here and Zanardi’s completed on the circuit that winds through Exhibition Place and along Lakeshore Drive.

The seven wins in 10 races also match a record set by Rick Mears in the 1981-82 seasons and tied by Unser in 1994.

Shinji Nakano finished a career-best fourth, followed by Scott Dixon, Jimmy Vasser, Alex Tagliani and Tora Takagi, the last driver on the lead lap at the end.

It was a chaotic race, starting with Paul Tracy jumping the start and bringing out the first of four yellow flags.

When the green flag waved on the second lap, da Matta stayed ahead of Tracy and that’s the way it remained.

Tracy, a local favorite from suburban Toronto, was still hoping to make a race of it when his front brakes began to fail. He spun on lap 73 and wound up sliding into a runoff area. The he spun again before calling it quits after 88 laps.

There were several crashes, one of them controversial. Rookie Townsend Bell, who has crashed numerous times in the first eight races this season, was a lap behind the leaders when he passed Michel Jourdain and slid into Bruno Junqueira, sending him into a tire wall.

Bell’s car was capable of continuing, but CART officials excluded him from the race.