WEST ALLIS, Wisconsin -- Sebastien Bourdais is driving "better than ever" and that has made the four-time Champ Car World Series driver a threat to add a future Verizon IndyCar Series championship to his impressive list of career accomplishments.
Bourdais' KVSH Racing team has strong roots to the old CART and Champ Car World Series. Team co-owner Jimmy Vasser won the 1996 CART title when he was driving for Target/Chip Ganassi Racing. The other co-owner is Kevin Kalkhoven, the man who ran Champ Car and owned the series with Gerry Forsythe and Paul Gentilozzi from 2004-2007.
It was during that time that Bourdais drove for Newman-Haas-Lanigan Racing and won four-straight Champ Car titles from 2004-2007. Bourdais left for a brief Formula One career after the 2007 season and Kalkhoven brokered a deal with Indy Racing League owner Tony George, where Champ Car would fold and George would absorb its teams into a unified IndyCar Series beginning with the 2008 season.
Bourdais competed in just 27 Formula One races in 2008 and 2009 and competed in sports car racing before he began to rebuild his Verizon IndyCar Series career. He competed in just nine of the 17 races in 2011 for team owner Dale Coyne and 11 of 15 races in 2012 for Dragon Racing. He ran the full 2013 season for Dragon Racing and took that modest operation to a second-place and third-place finish in the Honda Indy Toronto "2 in T.O." doubleheader and another third-place finish at the Grand Prix of Baltimore.
Tony Kanaan won the 2013 Indianapolis 500 for KV Racing but left after that season to join Chip Ganassi Racing. Bourdais took over Kanaan's No. 11 ride and took the team to victory lane in one of the two Toronto races last season.
This year has brought even more success with a victory in the second Chevy Dual in Detroit Doubleheader race on May 31 and a decisive victory in Sunday's ABC Supply Wisconsin 250 at the Milwaukee Mile.
It may have been the closest thing to a vintage Bourdais performance since he returned to Verizon IndyCar Series racing. Sunday's win was reminiscent of Bourdais when he dominated the Champ Car World Series with four-straight series championships from 2004-2007.
Bourdais was the class of the field, leading three times for 118 laps in the 250-lap contest at the one-mile oval located at the Wisconsin State Fair Park. It was Bourdais' fifth victory on an oval and his first since Milwaukee in 2006. It was his 34th career victory, tying him with Al Unser Jr. for seventh all-time wins list.
"You are only as good as your car is and you can only dominate as much as the field allows you to," Bourdais said. "I had seasons where only five or six cars could give me a run for my money and now 15 cars can win the race. You really have to step up your game as much as you can. The team is doing a great job and to step it up on the ovals is special. Now, it seems like we have a pretty solid baseline to improve.
"I don't think I'm any better or worse than I was during my best years with Newman-Haas. I'm just a more experienced driver. I feel more comfortable and don't feel that I have to overachieve whatever I'm trying to do behind the wheel to overcompensate for a car that isn't that good. People expect me to be the Sebastien Bourdais from 2004-2007 and that is impossible. I tried to do that when I first came here and I looked like an idiot. We are more consistent now and I don't need to do anything special to get good results. It's working so we have to keep doing what we are doing and hopefully more rewards will come."
Bourdais defeated Helio Castroneves by 2.2366 seconds. Castroneves started last in the 24-car field after his car was late to the qualification line earlier on Sunday.
"Bourdais? The guy is not a champion four times by luck," Castroneves said afterwards. "He definitely has talent. Looks like the combination with his team this year - he got two wins - it's definitely showing. The series is competitive. Everyone, every driver, to be here, you got to have talent. For sure, I have no doubt, winning the race, especially Milwaukee, a place like this, the team did a great job."
Third-place finisher Graham Rahal broke into big-time racing in 2007 with Newman-Haas-Lanigan when Bourdais was in the midst of his four straight series titles.
"I was teammates with him and I saw all sides of him," Rahal said. "But when it's his day, he is damn hard to beat. That's just the truth."
Bourdais was actually aided by a miscommunication between himself and Vasser, who calls his race strategy for KVSH Racing. It was during a caution and Bourdais was waiting for the call from Vasser on whether to enter pit road.
"Jimmy came on the radio saying, 'Do whatever the leaders do,'" Bourdais said. "Too late, I had passed pit lane. I guess we're not coming in. In the meantime, I was like, 'Boy, only did 10 laps, running in clean air, we're going to be able to go quick.' I was thinking, 'Not so bad.'
"Sure enough, another yellow came out. I'm thinking, 'Boy, that's not looking very good.' At that point I just said, 'all right, I'm going to have fun in the car, enjoy the clean air, run quick, and we'll see what happens.' And that worked out pretty good."
Bourdais was able to build a huge lead because he was at the front of the field after the other drivers had pitted on the previous caution. At one point his lead was over 18 seconds.
"The next sequence was the crucial one," he recalled. "When I came out of the pits, boiling, on a mission. They all had to save fuel. They had significantly older tires than me. They didn't have the pace at that time because they had to drive a pace to save fuel and make it. There was no more yellow to make their life any easier. At that point they were trapped in their own strategy.
"So I just run like hell and start passing one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Here we go, leading the race again. I was like, 'Man, that's just awesome.'
"After that, never looked back and was pretty much in control from there. I was not making mistakes. We didn't have time to make an adjustment for the last stop; we were really free at the end. At that point I was running in front of the pack and I really didn't need to do anything crazy to make anything happen."
"On these ovals you can go from hero to zero and back to hero again," Bourdais said in victory lane. "I guess that's my story. It's so much about momentum when you can feel one with the car, and today the guys gave me an awesome car. It felt pretty good off the truck and I thought 'This could be a pretty good weekend.' And then we messed up qualifying.
"Never did I think we would come up though the field and pass everybody. It's just unbelievable. It's what these places do to you. When the car is right it's so, so special."
Winning used to come on a regular basis for Bourdais in his Champ Car days. It's starting to come with regularity again in the Verizon IndyCar Series. Just as Juan Pablo Montoya has enjoyed a rebirth to his career in IndyCar, the same can be said for Bourdais who could be a legitimate title threat in 2016.
"I just enjoy the moment, have fun with it," Bourdais said. "That group gave me a chance to finally get me back in a car that's something able to contend for wins. Not every weekend, but it's a very competitive field. Now it's starting to come together. We're just going out there with our guts and our feelings and our energy. It's a small group, but it's a heck of a group, and I'm really enjoying my time.
"I'm 36 years old, and I don't feel I've been any better than I am right now. I'm just hoping it lasts as long as I can."
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