As the curtain opens on the 2006 Champ Car World Series season, the stage lights fall on a bespectacled young Frenchman chasing history.
Sebastien Bourdais plays the lead in this year's 15-round series, looking simultaneously to defend his twice-earned Champ Car title while also trying to become the first driver since Ted Horn in 1948 to win three consecutive series championships.
He begins his quest at this weekend's Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, a place where he started his successful hunt a year ago with a victory on the fabled 1.968-mile street course.
After qualifying his Newman-Haas Racing Lola-Ford fourth, Bourdais went on to lead 37 of the day's 81 laps and held off a late charge from multi-time Long Beach winner Paul Tracy.
The list of drivers that have won America's longest-running street race reads like a Hall of Fame roster, with names like Andretti, Unser, Sullivan and Zanardi all earning the right to have their likenesses forever etched at the entrance to Victory Lane. The history-rich event has become the pre-eminent street race in all of North America, and will welcome the Champ Car World Series for the 23rd time when the green flag flies over another huge crowd on Sunday afternoon.
“I think it is quite easy to realise that being able to stay at the top in three consecutive seasons is extremely difficult,” says Bourdais. “The real thing that saves us is that we all realise that you can drop off very easily. If we want to say that we want to win the championship again, we our going to have to dedicate ourselves to doing whatever it takes.
“To be able to make history with a third consecutive championship for the McDonald's team is a big motivation but I don't need that to go at it and work hard,” adds Bourdais, who has never qualified lower than fifth at Long Beach despite making his CCWS debut there in 2003. “ I think realistically the team has been doing a fantastic job for two years in a row now and when you get to the top the only thing you want to do is stay there so we don't need extra motivation but I guess it would be nice to end up in the history books. It is hard to believe sometimes that after only three seasons, we have been able to accomplish everything that we have done with Newman/Haas Racing.”
But despite being the protagonist in this production, the road to the top both in Long Beach and in the chase for the Vanderbilt Cup is far from being a pre-written certainty for Bourdais. Challenges will come in a number of forms throughout the 18-car field, including one that comes from the very own team that has provided the power that carried him to back-to-back titles in the last two seasons.
Bruno Junqueira makes his return to the Champ Car battlegrounds with this weekend's event for the first time since his harrowing accident in last year's Indianapolis 500 left him with severe back injuries.
