Sebastien Bourdais took another big step towards securing a fourth Vanderbilt Cup by turning in a sweet drive to win the inaugural Champ Car Grand Prix of Belgium at Zolder.
The Frenchman got away cleanly from pole, leaving the squabble into the tight first turn to be headed by title rivals Will Power and Robert Doornbos. Making the most of starting on the same line as Bourdais, the Dutchman snatched an early advantage, demoting Power to third, as Justin Wilson did likewise to Bruno Junqueira.
Simon Pagenaud made a poor getaway, dropping two places to tenth, while Katherine Legge dropped from a hard-earned 14th on the grid to 16th after being pushed wide at turn one.
Thankfully, there was no incident at the opening corner, despite Doornbos and Power going wheel-to-wheel, although the Australian was probably ruing the decision to start on the harder black-walled Bridgestones when the majority of his rivals opted for red. Cooler conditions prevailed over Zolder, meaning that Power had to work harder to get his rubber up to temperature, allowing not only Bourdais, but also Doornbos, to pull away in the opening stint.
Legge dropped to the very back when Alex Figge got past the Dale Coyne car on lap two, with Alex Tagliani taking advantage of Paul Tracy putting two wheels onto the sandy verge two laps later to reclaim the sixth place he had lost to his fellow Canadian at the start. Pagenaud, meanwhile, saw his situation worsen when both Jan Heylen and Mario Dominguez demoted him, with Tracy losing another spot, to Neel Jani, on lap 15. In all cases, however, it took a mistake from the car ahead for those chasing to pass, confirming pre-race speculation that Zolder was just too narrow to enable unaided overtaking.
