Whether you like or dislike
Sebastien Bourdais and, personally, this writer has never been a fan it is hard to deny that has ridden roughshod over the Champ Car world for the past four maybe even five years.
While not ultimately successful in his rookie year, the Frenchman showed glimpses of the momentum that would subsequently carry him to four straight titles and, finally, a place in
Formula One.
Champ Car attempted to derail the Bourdais steamroller in 2007 by returning everyone, including the Frenchman's all-conquering and renamed Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing operation, to square one with the introduction of an all-new chassis, the Panoz-built DP01.
Despite extensive testing in the hands of veteran Roberto Moreno, there were naturally teething troubles that upset the order of things for a while, but the top teams eventually came to the fore with the new machine, leading to Bourdais clinching a record-breaking fourth successive title one round from the end of the season.
The Frenchman suffered his worst result in round one, having to park the McDonalds car after a fraught afternoon on the new street circuit in Las Vegas, but registered only one other finish outside the top ten as that familiar momentum grew and grew thereafter.
Long Beach has traditionally been a happy hunting ground for Bourdais and so it proved again, the Frenchman taking a comfortable win on the Californian coast, and the following it up with two more, in Houston and Portland. After the trip to the Rose City, however, there were results of twelfth (Cleveland) and ninth (Toronto) to sandwich second at the new' Mont-Tremblant, which gave the championship something of an unrealistic appearance at its mid-point.
The introduction of the new car had given teams outside of NHLR a glimpse of the front, with Team Australia and the rechristened Minardi Team USA taking the opportunity to launch two new names onto the winners' list.
