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Bourdais the man to beat. |
Since his Champ Car debut at St Petersburg in February of 2003 with what was then Newman/Haas Racing, Sebastien Bourdais has been the series' man to beat.
He qualified on the pole at St. Pete, as he did at his second Champ Car race in Monterrey, Mexico the next month, and led both races before running into a series of problems, eventually brushing the wall and failing to finish either race.
“We knew we had a great group of guys and we were really fast straight off in St Pete,” Bourdais recalls. “We had that first pole and looked very strong. It's not always been smooth but we always had that speed and it's very comforting because when you know you've got the speed you know at some point it's going to pay off. And I think that was all along what made it a little easier. Even when it was tough and wouldn't materialise we knew we had the speed and it was gonna happen at some point.”
Bourdais scored his first Champ Car win in only his fourth start and went on to take six poles and score three wins in his rookie season. Then followed four superlative years and an all-time record for Champ or Indy Car racing of four consecutive championships.
Last year Bourdais tied Ted Horn's half a century-old record. This year he stands alone as a four times in a row champion of American open-wheel racing and with one race to go in his Champ Car career with Newman/Haas/Lanigan, Bourdais's remarkable record shows thirty wins from seventy-two starts plus twelve more podium finishes for a sixty percent score of podiums versus starts.
“It's certainly been a lot of fun,” Bourdais grinned. “When you look back, it's a big achievement and a group success. It's kind of tough to summarize these five years. So many things happened and so many good things obviously. It was great to top it off with a win in Surfers and become the first repeat winner over there. I have a lot of great memories and great events through these five years. I think Long Beach will probably remain very special for me. We've won a few times there and it's been a track that's been really good to me, but it's not the only one.”
It can be argued that Bourdais's period of dominance occurred at a time of small fields and comparatively weak competition. That may be true, but it doesn't dispute the fact that the guy still had to go out there and make it happen, lap by lap, race after race. When you're expected to win it can be a pretty heavy burden and most of the time Bourdais handled it well.
“It kind of took some of the fun away in some respects,” Bourdais admitted. “Because obviously when you finished second and you think you've had a pretty decent day, yeah, you were not the best on that given day but you still put in a pretty good performance, and people are starting to say, 'Well, what happened to you? You only finished second today.' That is a little difficult to deal with, I have to say.
“It also contributed to the fact that I wanted to move on to another challenge. Obviously, at some point you're going to fall - you're gonna not win - and that would have been very hard on everybody. But it's always a little tough to manage that pressure.”
