Champ Car: Post qualifying press conference transcript

By Flagworld (Auto123.com),

Saturday, July 05, 2003

Page 1 of 2
Previous
1
2
Next

From Cleveland's leaders to date

source: cart.com

ERIC MAUK: Our rookie points leader celebrates the addition of a new co-primary sponsor on his car this week and does so by running third on the day. The driver of the #2 McDonald's Lilly Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone, Sebastien Bourdais, turns a fast lap of 59.163 seconds, 128.148 miles per hour on his final lap of the session to finish third on the day. Sebastien, your first day on the Cleveland Burke Lakefront Airport circuit. What do you think?

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: I think it's a lot of fun on this track. You can push very hard. We saw a lot of guys going out of the track because basically you can go out of the line and still continue in the session. So it's a lot of fun, you can push hard, and it's interesting.

ERIC MAUK: Saw a lot of guys going off, including each one of you three at one point coming off there. Was there dirt on the runway at all?

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: The problem is basically when somebody goes off of the track, is carrying some dust on the line, and when you arrive on that, most of the time you spin off, so you put even more dust on the track and it gets worse and worse. So it's fairly difficult to manage that. It's also very difficult to anticipate because you never know who did the mistake in front of you or not. So it's pretty tough. But it's for everybody the same. I think I did a good last lap. The Newman/Haas team did a great job because I never went there and we only had an hour session of practice before the qualifying. I'm pretty pleased to be on the top three for the moment.