SAN JOSE, Calif. — Whether he wins a record fourth-consecutive Champ Car title or not, Sebastien Bourdais is ready for a change of scenery.
“It’s time for me to do something else,” Bourdais said prior to finishing fifth in the Grand Prix of San Jose. “For me, something else is either Formula One or NASCAR.”
Up until the last week, F-1 was a foregone conclusion for the fleet Frenchman. The Scuderia Toro Rosso F-1 team has an option on Bourdais for the 2008 season, set to expire July 31.
But on Friday, it was announced that Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing has entered a partnership with NASCAR stalwart Robert Yates. Suddenly running for a back-of-the-pack F-1 team might not hold so much appeal for Bourdais, especially if he has the opportunity to go stock-car racing with engineers and mechanics he is familiar with.
The partnership didn’t surprise Champ Car insiders, who believe principal NHLR owners Carl Haas (age 77) and Paul Newman (age 82) were looking to guarantee a secure future for their longtime team members at a time when open-wheel racing continues to lose ground to NASCAR in the American marketplace.
Bourdais deeply impressed the stock-car set when he won an IROC race at Texas Motor Speedway a couple of years ago. And Yates’s son, Doug, said that Seb’s name has already come up in their team’s talks about a driver to pair with David Gilliland.
“That has definitely been a discussion we’ve had,” Yates said. “I think Sebastien is very interested in NASCAR, and I think it would be great for NASCAR to have Sebastien here. We don’t go into day one of this saying that’s our plan, but it is a possibility.”
Assuming he can get out of his potential contract with Toro Rosso, I think it’s more than just a possibility, even though Bourdais did his best to quiet down the raging rumor mill.
“(NHLR) are just going to bring some methods and some organization and some knowledge to Yates, but it is completely unrelated to what I will end up doing in the future,” Bourdais commented. “I just think people are getting everything mixed up a little bit.”
Bourdais claimed he is still unaware of Toro Rosso’s position with regard to his future. “Well, it’s not Tuesday, so I’m still waiting,” he said. “If they were going to announce it, I guess it would have been done already.”
A positive work atmosphere certainly wouldn’t be a problem for Bourdais if he was accompanied to NASCAR by some of his longtime co-workers at Newman/Haas/Lanigan, especially engineer Craig Hampson.
Earlier this year, Hampson revealed his desire to possibly switch to NASCAR someday..
“Do I miss the design projects and the intense R&D we used to get to work on?” Hampson asked. “Absolutely! That’s why engineers get involved in racing. People think NASCAR is so restrictive, but engineers who used to work in open wheel say it’s way better than what we are doing because there is so much more money to do more interesting science and research than we ever get to do in Champ Car or the IRL. It is the absolute opposite of what everybody thinks.”
Bourdais says that while he and his wife enjoy the American lifestyle, they would appreciate relocating to Europe to be closer to their parents. He also expressed concern about NASCAR’s grueling 38-weekend schedule.
Still, given the Yates/NHLR hook-up, it’s pretty easy to connect the dots and conclude that NASCAR would be an appealing challenge for Champ Car’s top star.
And if Toro Rosso doesn’t announce Bourdais as one of its 2008 drivers in the next week, I’d say Seb is headed in a radically different direction that even he never would have expected.