Bourdais Clinches Fourth Straight Title

[Schwartz Fan]

Bourdais Clinches Fourth Straight Title

RacingOne Report


Sebastien Bourdais solidified his legendary status as a Champ Car World Series driver by locking up his fourth consecutive Series title with an impressive victory Down Under at the Lexmark Indy 300.

The Frenchmen, who is set to depart Champ Car to pursue a career in Formula One next season, will have left his name in many places in the record book. With his 30th career victory today, the Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing driver became the first driver in history to win four consecutive Champ Car World Series titles, a feat that is very rare in professional sports. In fact it has never been done in either NASCAR or NFL and it hasn't been done in the last twenty years in the NBA, NHL or MLB.

To add to his already long list of records, Bourdais also became the first repeat winner in the 17 year history of the Surfers Paradise event. Bourdais had previously won Down Under in 2005. The race started off well for Bourdais who moved up one position from his fourth place on the grid when Paul Tracy and Oriol Servia touched, sending Tracy spinning.

"You know, it's just the success of an awesome group of people within that McDonald's team," Bourdais said. "We started that relationship back in 2003. Just all the results really speak for themselves. You know, it's how good these guys are. And they proved it today again when we came in the pits in third and came out first. From there, it was in my hands to try to make it stick."

While Tracy was making his way up through the field, Will Power was building a lead up front after starting on pole. Tracy was pushing a little too hard and touched the tire bundle in Turn 7 which took out the yellow flag. With the yellow came the first round of pit stops. Tracy, Robert Doornbos and Bruno Junqueira elected to stay out while the rest of the field headed down pit lane.

The first round of pits stops were not incident-free. Race leader Power was exiting his pit box when David Martinez was entering his and contact ensued, sending Power to the rear of the field. Power would later on fall out of the race after he and Katherine Legge came together when the Australian was trying to get by her.

Bourdais picked up the lead when Tracy pitted on lap 20. The Frenchman maintained his lead until his second pit stop on lap 32. Bourdais came out in second but was quickly overtaken by Justin Wilson. However Bourdais retook his position in front of the field when Wilson pitted on lap 44. After that, the four time champ never looked back and kept putting in fast laps building a gap over Wilson. When Bourdais pitted for a final time on lap 48 he was able to maintain his lead on the Briton and clinch an unprecedented fourth straight title.

Tracy was running third when he had to pit for fuel on the last lap which enabled Junqueira to score a third consecutive podium finish. It was the Brazilian's 100th start and 34th career podium. Rookie Doornbos came home in fourth and clinched the Rookie of the year title while Team Australia's Simon Pagenaud was fifth.

Nelson Philippe finished sixth in his return with Conquest Racing. Alex Tagliani, Neel Jani, Tracy, and Martinez rounded out the top-ten.

Next up for the Champ Car World Series will be the season finale in Mexico City on November 11, 2007. The race will be broadcast live on ESPN2 at 2 p.m. (ET).

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