BOURDAIS IS SUPREME STREET PERFORMER
source:
lolacars.com
Sebastien Bourdais performed to perfection in winning the 31st annual Toyota
Grand Prix of Long Beach last night in his Newman Haas Lola. It was his 11th
series victory and 18th podium in only 33 career Champ Car starts.
The Frenchman, who claimed the 2005 Vanderbilt Cup used superior Lola setups and
excellent pit strategy to lead 37 of 81 laps around the 1.968-mile Long Beach
streets and beat polesitter Paul Tracy's Forsythe-Lola by 4.138 seconds.
Bourdais denied Tracy a third consecutive win on the Californian streets and
completed a perfect start to his championship defence after outbraking the
veteren in to the first corner after a re-start. His team mate, Bruno Junqueira
who started in second place, completed the podium in the second of the Newman
Haas Lola's, followed by Justin Wilson who equaled his best ever Champ finish in
4th with the Ru SPORT Lola. Mario Dominguez, making his first start to team mate
to Paul Tracy gave a very good account of himself in 5th.
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THE TOP 3 CELEBRATE AFTER A FASCINATING RACE
"We didn't change the car that much all weekend and not at all after the
morning warmup," Bourdais revealed. "We just did our best to extract the best
out of our Lola and our Bridgestone tyres." Runner-up Tracy, took his 63rd
podium in his 14 year Champ career and admitted that that Bourdais was just too
quick on raceday. "I tried to keep pace with Sebastien but we were not where we
wanted to be, all in all," he said.