Flying Frenchman Obliterates Record

As reported on AP, here's the story on Sebastien Bourdais' record run.

Throughout his four-year Champ Car World Series career, Frenchman Sebastien Bourdais, the reigning three-time series champion, has shown a flair for the dramatic and he did so once again Saturday on the second and final day of Champ Car’s Spring Training at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.

Moments before a red flag came out that ended the day’s testing when his former teammate, Bruno Junqueira, ran off course, Bourdais blistered the 2.238-mile, 11-turn permanent road course with a lap of 1 minute, 5.880 seconds (122.295 miles per hour) to set a new, albeit unofficial, track record, smashing the prior mark established by Ricardo Zonta in Toyota’s TF106 Formula One car.

Official records must be set in race conditions, either in qualifying sessions or during the race itself so the mark by Bourdais goes into the book with an asterisk.

After three drivers, including Paul Tracy of Forsythe Championship Racing, Bourdais of Newman Haas Lanigan Racing and rookie Neel Jani of PKV Racing, had come within about four-tenths of a second of Zonta’s unofficial mark of 1:06.309 (121.504 mph) on Friday, Champ Car posted a $5,000 "bounty" payable to the first driver to eclipse the mark Saturday.

The official track record was set by Helio Castroneves in 2000 when he qualified at 1:07.722 (118.969 mph).

"It’s great that we were able to get under the track time set by the 2006 F1 car," said Bourdais who became a father during the off season. "We used Push to Pass (a feature giving the car an extra boost of horsepower) but it’s only good for a couple of tenths here so we would have broke it without using it.

"The track has a lot of grip; it’s really fun to drive here. Unfortunately there is so much grip that I really doubt we can use any of the information we gained at any of the tracks this season. The information might be completely irrelevant. We were able to work through some issues with the car. Cosworth is really trying to get some issues resolved and have made some progress and Hewland has improved the gearbox.

"The McDonald’s boys (his crew) have fixed what they could but now it is in the hands of the suppliers. There aren’t any tests left so I really hope they can fix the problems but we won’t know until we get to Las Vegas. You hardly ever win a championship with a good start to the season but you can lose it if you have a bad start."

Though seven drivers, including Bourdais, turned times of under 1:07 in the morning session Saturday, none but Bourdais approached the record in the afternoon. He flashed across the start-finish line on the record-setting lap with just under 10 minutes remaining in testing. There wasn’t enough time to collect Junqueira and clean the track, so the test session was ended.

The final hour of Champ Car’s last of three open tests, the drivers practiced standing starts, which Champ Car has said it wants to use at some point during the season which begins April 8 on the streets of Las Vegas.

Will Power of Team Australia had set the early test standard Saturday morning with a time of 1:06.424 (121.294 mph). Power never got below that and the time held as second best for the two days. Jani, who can hardly be considered a rookie because of his experience racing in Europe and as an F1 driver, was third quickest over the two days at 1:06.516 (121.126 mph).

Eight other drivers did dip below 1:07, including 18-year-old sensation Graham Rahal of Newman Haas Lanigan Racing, rookie Simon Pagenaud of Team Australia, Tracy, Justin Wilson of RuSPORT, rookie Matt Halliday of Conquest Racing and Robert Doornbos of Minardi Team USA. Junqueira, testing for Dale Coyne Racing, was the last driver under the official track record with a time of 1:07.048 (120.165 mph).