Six weeks ago, Sebastien Bourdais finished last in the Time Warner Cable Roadrunner 250 at Milwaukee to drop to fourth in the Champ Car World Series drivers standings.
Since then, the Frenchman has hardly put a foot wrong, and he heads into this weekends Molson Indy Vancouver bidding to join Cristiano da Matta, Alex Zanardi and Al Unser Jr. as the only drivers since 1971 to win four consecutive Champ Car races. He will also try to defend the biggest lead anyone has held in the championship race this season, with the gap to Newman Haas teammate Bruno Junqueira currently standing at 28 points.
Bourdais will look to make Champ Car history on a track that features plenty of its own history. The 12-turn course on the streets of Concord Pacific Place features one of the longest and fastest straights of any Champ Car street course. The track has been a place that has seen the joys of initial Champ Car wins by drivers like Mauricio Gugelmin, the dominance of Juan Montoya, Roberto Moreno and Dario Franchitti as well as the heartache of near-misses like the 2001 gut-wrencher delivered to Alex Tagliani. This will be the 15th consecutive season that the Champ Cars will roar in British Columbia in an event that has drawn more than 155,000 fans in each of the last 11 seasons.
Bourdais returns to the 1.781-mile Vancouver street course after scoring a podium finish during his 2003 rookie campaign. Then he finished third despite a trying day that saw him make six pit stops to everyone else's three. The reigning 'Rookie of the Year' suffered contact in the first corner that sent him down Pit Lane, then ran into a pair of stalled cars while leaving the pits. Those incidents dropped him well back in the field but he charged through the pack during the remainder of the day to take his place on the podium.
With four wins in the six races held so far, Bourdais has a simple aim for the weekend; make it five wins in seven.
"There is high braking and the corners are slow which makes it an interesting and challenging track,” he said. “Push to Pass will be very powerful if you use it but you won't have so many shots. You can only use a couple of times so you have to make sure if you use it you pass. Compared to last year we have the same level of speed but the thing is we are much more successful and we don't have bad luck so far. It's a much better year for us. We have a full time sponsorship with McDonald's and that helped our program. Things are looking pretty good we won four races out of six and we just hope to continue this.”
Newman/Haas Racing teammate, Junqueira missed out on the Vancouver win in 2003 when he was found to have jumped the start, handing the win to Paul Tracey. Junqueira is currently in second place in the 2004 standings despite not having won a race and having led just six of the year's 678 laps. He has used four second-place finishes to score his 136 points, but comes into this weekend on the back of a last-place finish in Toronto.
He knows a strong result this weekend is vital to his championship challenge.
"Vancouver is a good race track,” he said. “I like to race in Vancouver, it's one of my favourite cities we race in all year. Last year I finished second and this year I hope the PacifiCare car will do even better because the Championship is very close. It will be important to finish well.”
Canadian fan favourite Patrick Carpentier scored his second podium of the year with a third-place run in Toronto to move to third in the championship standings. However, in six Champ Car races in Vancouver he has yet to lead a lap.
Behind Carpentier in the standings is teammate, and 2003 race winner, Paul Tracy. The defending Champ Car series champion has three podiums and three front-row starts to his credit on the tight street course and could use another strong run as he looks to close what has become a 56-point gap to Bourdais.
