“It's been up-and-downhill,” he reflected. “It was a great start, but since Barcelona it's been very difficult. That's what racing is about, though – sometimes it goes well, sometimes it doesn't, and you've just got to keep on working and hoping for the best. For sure lately it has been a bit difficult.
“
F1 is nearly incomparable. The biggest difference is obviously in the [grooved] tyres, but that's not something new I discovered – I knew about that from 2002, when I first drove a
Formula 1 car. I'm not a big fan of them, to be honest – that's the least I can say – but those are the current rules, and all I can hope for is that next year [when slick tyres – what he was accustomed to in Champ Cars – are re-introduced into the sport] we'll have a lot more fun and that I'll be there to enjoy it.
“The toughest thing for me I think has been the lack of adjustments that you can make on the car; if you have a problem balance-wise or something like that, it's very difficult to turn things around in Formula 1 because the cars are designed and optimised to a certain concept and configuration.
“Wherein with the Champ Car you could change a lot of things – dampers and suspension geometry and so on and so forth – in Formula 1 if you want to change something on the suspension, you've got to change the whole suspension. That's a bit limiting sometimes.”
Looking ahead, Bourdais is unwilling to make too many predictions, save for agreeing that the small Faenza-based concern's Monaco-introduced STR3 – essentially a carbon copy of parent outfit
Red Bull Racing's RB4, albeit
Ferrari rather than Renault-powered – is a substantial step forward over its interim STR2B predecessor, a car he agreed was getting somewhat long in the tooth in its latter stages.
“It's always difficult to say,” he stressed. “I think it's between five and eight tenths [quicker] probably. We were lacking pace quite dramatically towards the end of the life of the STR2B, and we knew that. Now we're getting back into a group where we're fighting really hard.
