Despite Penalty, Bourdais Closes Out Champ Car Career With Victory

MEXICO CITY — The odds were stacked against Sebastien Bourdais in the Tecate Gran Premio presented by Banamex.
Bourdais won anyway.
The 28-year old Frenchman dominated the final race of his Champ Car career to record his 31st victory by 1.905 seconds over fastest qualifier Will Power, with Oriol Servia third. Yet it was anything but a typical Bourdais victory.
The Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing team leader started with a major handicap after he and his teammate Graham Rahal were deemed guilty of making illegal practice starts in the pre-race warm-up session. Champ Car took away 22 of their allotted 75 seconds of Power-to-Pass turbocharger overboost. That could have proved disastrous on the 2.8-mile Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez road course, which features a mile-long main straight.

SPECIAL MOMENT: Champion Sebastien Bourdais shares a moment with his wife, Claire, and daughter Emma after taking Sunday's Champ Car season finale in Mexico City. (Champ Car Photo)

In addition, the P2P function was worth an additional 100 horsepower in Mexico City rather than the usual 50. Had Bourdais used up all his P2P early in the race, he could potentially have been a sitting duck in a close finish.
Sure enough, a full course yellow came out with less than 20 minutes remaining in the one hour, 45-minute contest, erasing Bourdais’s 12-second lead over Power.
At the time, the four-time series champion had 30 seconds worth of P2P left, as opposed to Power’s 65 seconds. But Bourdais demonstrated his championship qualities by making a perfect restart and outpacing Power over the final five green flag laps despite his rival’s potential horsepower advantage.
Bourdais wasn’t happy about the pre-race penalty or what he considered a highly questionable ‘competition’ yellow. Champ Car race directors said the debris yellow was caused by an errant wing endplate or diffuser component in the fourth of 17 turns at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.
Despite the extra challenges thrown his way, Bourdais won his eighth race of the season. He led 41 of the 64 laps and averaged 101.403 mph.
“I knew it wasn’t going to be easy with the reduced push-to-pass and the fact that they increased the importance of it this weekend,” said the four-time series champion. “It was going to be super-hard, but once again the McDonald’s team pulled it off. We had awesome pit stops, a great strategy and great speed and that’s what it’s all about.
“Motor racing always comes back down to this — it doesn’t matter how many hurdles they put in your way,” he continued. “There was no better way to finish off that chapter in my career and I really felt everyone on the team deserved it. It really tops everything off because between the emotion and the performance on the race track and the circumstances, it’s quite complete.”
Much of the interest prior to the Mexico City event centered around the race for second place in the Champ Car championship. Justin Wilson clinched the position for RuSPORT Racing despite being limited to a 10th-place finish due to fuel pickup problems.
Power led the other 23 laps from pole position, but his second-place finish was not enough to bump the Team Australia driver up to third place in the standings. Third overall fell to Robert Doormbos, who had a remarkably eventful day in the Minardi Team USA entry.
Doornbos qualified third, but his race was compromised by a clutch failure on the third lap of the race. His crew, led by Daryl Fox, replaced the clutch in 51 minutes in an effort to send Doornbos back out to try to clinch the bonus point for fastest lap of the race. The Dutchman succeeded, by the huge margin of 1.3 seconds.
“It’s really not the way we wanted to finish the season,” Doornbos stated. “We worked hard all weekend for a mega result today, and judging by our lap times, we could have accomplished just that. We had one of the fastest cars out there, but it’s a mechanical sport, and these things happen. I have to give a big, big thank you to all the mechanics who got me back out on the track, just to make sure we didn’t lose third place in the championship.”
Servia was one of the drivers who saved his P2P for the end of the race, and he was able to take advantage of Rahal’s penalty to pass the rookie for the final podium position with four laps to go.
 Paul Tracy, who Bourdais tied for sixth on the all-time list of Champ Car race winners with his 31st victory, finished fifth.