Triple defending Champ Car World Series Champion
Sebastien Bourdais shrugged off his nightmarish Las Vegas weekend to dominate Sunday's Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach and open his 2007 victory account at the second time of asking.
The Frenchman strolled to his third consecutive victory around the testing 1.97-mile Californian street circuit, comprehensively outclassing the rest of the field in a race that was still a far better advertisement for the new-look series than last weekend's shaky start in Las Vegas.
Although Bourdais' 24th career CWWS win (from just 61 starts) didn't come in a race packed with overtaking there was plenty of close quarters street course action to be found and, more importantly, the new Panoz chassis stood up far better mechanically than in the season opener just seven days ago.
From the drop of the green flag the 17 strong field successfully negotiated the notoriously tricky first turn without a major pile-up for the first time in what seems like a decade with both drivers and event organisers breathing s collective sigh of relief that the already thin field wasn't depleted any further. Poleman Bourdais charged into a relatively unchallenged lead with outside front row starter and Las Vegas victor Will Power slotting in nicely behind the #1 McDonalds machine. A little further round the opening lap Pacific Coast rookie Alex Figge did run out of track but managed to keep his car off the walls and out of the barriers and returned to action one lap adrift without the need of a full course caution.
Team Australia driver Power was able to keep Bourdais honest through the opening couple of laps with his former Team Oz teammate Alex Tagliani forming the RSPORTS filling in a yellow and green sandwich in third place with impressive rookie Simon Pagenaud holding down fourth. However the early rhythm was disrupted on lap nine when Forsythe Racing's Mario Dominguez clouted the tyre barriers in turn nine to bring out the first full course caution period.
![Sebastien Bourdais - Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing Panoz-Cosworth DP01 [pic courtesy Champ Car World Series]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/310466.jpg)
