French driver Sébastien Bourdais is a three-time champion of the Champ Car Series. He recently agreed to answer our questions after securing a spot with Team Toro Rosso for the next Formula One season.
Sébastien, you've just signed with Toro Rosso. But that was not the first time you tried to enter Formula One... Well, it all began in 1999 with a 5-year contract with Prost Grand Prix. Things looked good at first, but the team started to suffer from financial setbacks. Then, I tried out for Arrows and impressed quite a few people. They even hired me as their second driver, but two months later, the team went bankrupt. Finally, I had a few testing sessions with Renault. Unfortunately, they couldn't find a place for me on their team. Why? I knew there were no guarantees with Renault; winning the Formula 3000 championship was not enough at the time to jump to F1. What they offered me was not what I had in mind. Ten days of testing in F1 is good... when you're a featured driver or when you've just finished a year as a test driver like Fernando Alonso did. So that was the end for me. Like you said, you won the F3000 Championship but you wound up in the American Champ Car Series with Team Newman-Haas. How did it happen? Bernard Cahier [the former F1 photographer] played a major role. He personally knew Carl Haas and he told him a lot about me. When my boss in F3000, David Sears, went to meet Haas early in November 2002, he knew who I was. One thing quickly led to another and I found myself doing tests (with the help of Justin Wilson, who had rejected Haas' offer). I battled against Ricardo Zonta and I got outstanding results. I drove as fast as Ricardo, who can be considered a household name. Shortly after, I signed an agreement in principle.
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