The 100-year-old Vanderbilt Cup has received a fresh coat of polish and is packed up for its trip to Australia, where Sebastien Bourdais hopes to earn the right to hoist it in jubilant celebration after this weekend's Lexmark Indy 300 in Surfers Paradise.
The 25-year-old is the only driver that can clinch the championship in the year's penultimate race, but by no means is the Flying Frenchman assured of earning his first Champ Car title. He carries a 27-point lead into this weekend's event, but must score eight more points than Newman/Haas Racing teammate Bruno Junqueira in order to win the 2004 Champ Car title.
The statistics may show Bourdais to be the odds-on favourite if the year's 13th race were held on any other race track, but the 2.795-mile Surfers Paradise street course has a notorious reputation for being anything but predictable. The quirky street course, which features two of the fastest straights of any street course on the Champ Car calendar, has played home to some of the series' most interesting races, and seen some of Champ Car's most unexpected winners climb the podium.
Champ Car has raced on the Gold Coast of Australia 13 times and 13 different drivers have sprayed victory champagne after the race. The list of Australia winners reads like a Champ Car who's who, with seven former series champions having won there, but the race has also seen chaos breed first-time winners like John Andretti, Mario Dominguez and Ryan Hunter-Reay.
The wildly-popular event draws some of the biggest crowds of any sporting event in the country on annual basis with more than 250,000 fans coming through the gates in each of the last 10 seasons. Last year's attendance of 306,184 was an event record and was capped by a crowd of over 108,000 fans streaming through the gates on race day.
Bourdais has built his lead with six wins and seven poles, and could become just the seventh driver in the Champ Car Modern Era (1979-present) to win as many as seven races in a season with a victory in one of the last two races. He has led laps in each of the last nine races and has qualified in the top three in a series-record 13 consecutive events. He clinches his first Champ Car title and becomes the third-youngest driver to ever win the championship if he outscores Junqueira by eight points in Australia.
But those numbers have not clinched him the title as Junqueira has stayed in the hunt by virtue of his remarkable consistency. His six runner-up finishes are the most in a Champ Car season since Bobby Rahal scored six in 1991, ironically in a season where he finished second in the championship. He is in the midst of a streak of four consecutive podium finishes and each of his last two trips to Australia has seen him start the race in good position to do well. The Brazilian started on the outside of the front row in both race and he has led in both races, but a pair of mishaps kept him out of the points in both 2002 and '03.
Patrick Carpentier has likewise kept himself in the fray with three consecutive podium finishes, and the Canadian has a chance to earn his best-ever Champ Car season finish. He has a remote chance at stealing the championship title as he sits 66 points back with two races to go, but is eliminated if Bourdais takes the green flag in each of the final two events.
One of four former Australia winners in the field may have the fondest memories of the trip as Paul Tracy returns to the site where he clinched his first series championship a year ago. The 1995 race winner has had remarkable qualifying success in Australia, starting in the top five in each of the last eight races. Oddly enough, the last race he did not start in the top five was the 1995 event where he came from ninth of the grid to win. He was taken out of championship contention two weeks ago when mechanical failures struck on the first lap of the Las Vegas event, but he is still having a successful campaign and is the only driver other than Bourdais to win multiple races and poles this season.
