Champ Car Long Beach: Bourdais cruises to win

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Three-time Champ Car champion Sebastien Bourdais was in imperious form at Long Beach, as if his nightmare race at Las Vegas had never even happened.

He streaked away from the opposition at up to a second per lap and only a late safety car period that slashed his 20s advantage threatened to spoil his day.

It didn’t, of course, although it forced him to spend several laps running behind Tristan Gommendy whose PKV team made a bold bid for a shock win. The team elected to skip the last pit stop to take the lead, but had to make a splash-and-dash stop in the dying stages.

Gommendy’s pit stop was, ironically, followed by a final caution period caused by Alex Figge who crashed heavily and had to be extricated carefully by the medical team. Had Gommendy been able to make his fuel last a few more laps he could have scored a shock win.

The race went green again with two laps to go but no-one could get ahead of Bourdais.

Oriol Servia, standing in for Paul Tracy, benefited from a perfectly-timed pit stop to vault from 13th to second at the first round of stops which he held on to until the flag.

It was a deserved vindication for Servia who had been in the frame for a drive with Forsythe, but the team elected to run Mario Dominguez instead. Dominduez crashed out heavily on lap nine and left the track without speaking to the media.

Third was Will Power who took the place from Alex Tagliani at the start of the final lap. Tagliani’s team mate Justin Wilson did the same thing a few corners later to take fourth.

Bruno Junqueira, Neel Jani, Graham Rahal, Ryan Dalziel and Katherine Legge completed the top ten.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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