Q+A: Sebastien Bourdais

Saturday, April 7, 2007 | 7:20 a.m.

What: Vegas Grand Prix

When: Today and Sunday

Where: Downtown Las Vegas

Tickets: $29-$175, standing room is free in limited areas; (877) 795-7223 (RACE) or www.vegasgrandprix.com

Don't bet against Sebastien Bourdais to win this weekend's inaugural Vegas Grand Prix.

Bourdais, a 28-year-old Frenchman, has made a habit of making himself at home when the Champ Car World Series visits a new venue. He has won each of the past five inaugural races the series has held - including the 2004 race at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Bourdais took little time Friday getting the feel of the Las Vegas course. He was the fastest of 17 drivers during the opening practice session and was the third-quickest driver during first-round qualifying with a lap of 1:20.197 seconds. Las Vegas resident Paul Tracy is on the provisional pole at 1:19.784 (110.097 mph) and rookie Simon Pagenaud was second quickest at 1:19.998.

The second and final round of qualifying is scheduled for 2 p.m. today. Bourdais has qualified to start on the front row of seven consecutive Champ Car races.

Although Bourdais has won 20 races and three consecutive series championships in the past three seasons with Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing, he said he isn't lacking motivation as he prepares for his fifth season in the open-wheel series.

"Obviously, once you've won once, you want to win a second one and so on and so forth," he said. "I think it's not hard to find the motivation when you are with such a dedicated team and (have) really high-quality equipment and everything is given to you to perform.

"The motivation just is very easy to find. I just go out there, race my very best and try and win races, and when you do that, usually motivation isn't really hard to find."

Bourdais touched on a variety of other subjects when he spoke with the Sun as he prepared for this weekend's Vegas Grand Prix.

Q Are you more comfortable on a street course than you were on the oval out at Las Vegas Motor Speedway?

Really, it was no problem with the speedway. The problem was the wing package we had to run over there. It could have been good racing, but it would have had to go up to probably 230 (mph) and that would have been a little bit insane, I guess. I think it's good to go where it makes sense to go, and it happens to be downtown this year and it's a good thing. But again I really didn't have any problem with the oval, just high-banked tracks for Champ Car is just not the way to go - and even less so now that they've redone it.

You have made a name for yourself throughout your career by winning on courses and tracks that are new to the series. What's the secret to being able to so quickly adapt ?

I think a lot has to do with how good the ride I'm in is. The Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing team is obviously one of the best, if not the best, so it makes my life a lot easier. Everybody has a great time working together, and it's a combination of everything. You can't really point to one factor. We just happen to have everything right, the right driver, the right communication with the engineers and the right sponsor with McDonald's. As far as I'm concerned, it could hardly go any better than this.

You've dominated the series the past three seasons. Is there any reason to think that could change this season with the introduction of the new car?

We have to restart from scratch, pretty much, and it's going to be a different game with the new car. We don't have the same latitude to get the car to the next step because we can't redesign suspension, we can't use our own dampers or things like this. I think it might get a little frustrating for a team like Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing from time to time because we have designing engineers who are going to be finding their own situation very frustrating because they can't really do much. It's all going to be about concentrating all the little details and to get them all figured out because this year is going to be all about details.

Do you think the new car is going to make the competition closer throughout the field than it has been the past few years?

For sure, there's no doubt about it. The baseline setup that it came with was pretty good, and when you look at the testing and everything, you find a coin toss in the top five from the first day of testing to the last few days of the winter season. I think it's definitely going to be a lot closer.

So you're going to have your work cut out for you this season?

I think a lot of people thought it was easy, but it's never easy. The truth is, it's always been very competitive up front and then the density has not been necessarily very strong. But sometimes it actually made it harder because you couldn't make any mistakes. You had to finish , because if you didn't finish, your opponents were always going to finish in the top five or six no matter what, even if they had a bad day. Consistency was really important and mistake-free seasons. It might redistribute things a little bit.

This will be the first time in your Champ Car career that you have had to mentor a teammate (rookie Graham Rahal). How different will that be?

I don't know , because as surprising as it may sound, Graham has been very confident and very sure of himself. No arrogance or anything, but he knows what it's all about and he hasn't really been asking me for advice at all. He has just been going his own way, and it has worked out pretty good for him. I think he already knows what he needs to do and how he needs to do it to be competitive.