This weekend will mark a return to familiar surroundings for the majority of the Champ Car World Series field as it heads to Europe for a double-header 'flyaway' beginning at Zolder, in Belgium.
The Champ Car Grand Prix of Belgium will be the first Champ Car race in Europe since the disappointing outing at Brands Hatch in 2003, which preceded a tightening of the belts as CART faced the threat of extinction at the hands of the rival Indy Racing League. Fortunately for all concerned, the series was saved and now feels confident enough to spread its wings in an effort to justify its 'world series' tag.
The 2.622-mile Zolder road course will play host to Champ Cars for the very first time this weekend - the series having previously graced Brands Hatch, Silverstone and Rockingham in the UK and the Lausitzring in Germany - and gives Conquest Racing's Jan Heylen the chance to race on home soil for the first time in a while. The Belgian comes from a town about 25 minutes down the road from the track, for which he has been an ambassador for the past few years, and will be looking to give team owner Eric Bachelart a home win on his first return to the circuit where he first drove a race car and scored his first win.
Coming off their best result of the season with a sixth place finish at Road America, both driver and team owner will want to do even better in front of family, friends and sponsors, but will have to fend off a host of fellow Europeans, not least championship leader Sebastien Bourdais.
The three-time champion will be looking to increase the lead he gained at Elkhart Lake two weeks ago, when a disappointing result for closest competitor Robert Doornbos combined with a fifth win of the season for the Frenchman to put Doornbos down by 37 points.
Road America had long been an elusive track for Bourdais, but his fourth start was a lucky one as he set sail to lead all but two laps, winning the race by nearly ten seconds. To date, Bourdais has won at every track on the Champ Car schedule that he has more than one start on - and the last time that he raced in Europe was equally successful as he claimed his maiden Champ Car wins at Brands Hatch and Lausitz.
“Obviously, it would be awesome to go back to Europe with the McDonald's team and get another couple of wins, but those tracks [Zolder and Assen] are a big unknown for us," Bourdais commented, "I have never been to Zolder or Assen, but I didn't know Brands Hatch or Lausitz either and we managed to earn our first and second Champ Car wins there.
"Since it is an unknown, there is no big advantage for us so, hopefully, we can put together a good streak there. The team has prepared extensively and put in a lot of hard work. They have made their best guess on the simulation and baseline set-up. Obviously, it's pretty difficult to prepare since we don't know what we're going to be facing for real, but they have worked really hard and I'm pretty confident that we should have very good cars for both races."
Bourdais and Heylen aside, however, the remainder of the field - and particularly the Europeans - will want to do well in front of their closest fans, with Simon Pagenaud looking to score his first podium of the season in front of the bus loads of fans making the trip from France to Zolder.
