USA: MOTOR RACING - Champ Car Series defending champion Sebastian Bourdais cruises to victory at the Grand Prix of San Jose

Two-time defending series champion Sebastien Bourdais won Sunday's Canary Foundation Grand Prix of San Jose. The number 1 Newman-Haas Racing driver crossed the finish line 6.686 seconds ahead of Cristiano da Matta. The victory was Bourdais' fifth of the season and 21st of his Champ Car career. It leaves Bourdais just one victory behind two great names in racing - Emerson Fittipaldi and Tony Bettenhausen. The 97-lap event got started early when Paul Tracy beat pole winner Bourdais to the first hairpin turn and grabbed the race lead. As the Frenchman slowed into the turn, A.J. Allmendinger slid into the left-rear tire of Bourdais damaging the American's front nose wing. A caution flag for an accident between Oriol Servia and Bruno Junqueira on lap three gave officials time to review the race start and they penalised Tracy for jumping the start. They re-instated Bourdais as the race leader when the race restarted on lap six. Bourdais jumped off the restart and within 10 laps his margin over Tracy was 3.887 seconds. Then on lap 18, Tracy made a mistake and both Cristiano da Matta and Dan Clarke swept by the Canadian. The Frenchman put up two fast laps and the margin jumped to more than six seconds after 20 laps. The other two men in the championship battle, Justin Wilson and Allmendinger were stuck back in sixth and ninth-place, respectively. On lap 31, Clarke ducked under da Matta in turn seven and grabbed second place. He was still more than seven seconds behind Bourdais, but now no one was between himself and the leader. Bourdais was setting a torrid pace that no one could keep up with, but a full- course yellow when Katherine Legge slammed the tire barrier eliminated a huge nine-second margin. The entire field stopped during the caution and Bourdais' crew made no mistakes leaving the Frenchman still with the lead and 60 laps to go. On the lap 41 restart, Bourdais simply drove away from the field. In two laps the gap was more than one second over Clarke. More grave for the No.14 CTE race car was that spotters were reporting smoke and Tracy in third was reporting fluid coming from the second-place car. Tracy inherited second place, but was more than five seconds back. Trying to make up time, he overdrove the turn six corner. While coming back onto the track, Tracy inexplicably ran right into Alex Tagliani ending both their days. The two argued while walking back to the pits and a scuffle broke out. Meanwhile, most of the field pitted once again. Charles Zwolsman and Servia stayed out and inherited first and second. Bourdais and da Matta came back onto the track first of those who pitted and could reach the end of the race on fuel. The race went back to green with 39 laps to go. Servia and Zwolsman, who last stopped on lap 37, led the way, but Bourdais had almost two seconds on da Matta for the "real" race lead. Bourdais didn't have to, but he passed Zwolsman on lap 73. He was also chopping about half-a-second per lap on Servia. His margin over da Matta was five seconds when Servia finally made his stop on lap 80. Andrew Ranger brought out a caution flag in turn one with 16 laps to go leaving one final shootout between Bourdais, da Matta and Wilson for the win. The green flag dropped with 11 laps to go and Bourdais quickly established a working lead. In one lap the margin was 1.287 seconds. Three laps later the gap was 2.411 seconds and the race was over. Wilson, Nelson Philippe and Mario Dominguez completed the top-five. The next race is set for Sunday, August 13th in Denver, Colorado. Leading results of San Jose champcar race: S. Bourdais Newman/Haas Racing 1:38:00.168 C. da Matta RuSPORT 6.686 seconds behind J. Wilson RuSPORT 8.100 N. Philippe CTE Racing - HVM M. Dominguez Dale Coyne Racing W. Power Team Australia A. Allmendinger Forsythe Championship Racing O. Servia PKV Racing C. Zwolsman Mi-Jack Conquest Racing N. Pastorelli Rocketsports Racing

ITN Source | July 31, 2006

Tags:. .damaging. .andrew. .slowed. .fuel. .championship