CCWS Feature - Bourdais Tops Road America Time Sheets
21/06/2007
Sebastien Bourdais of the Newman/Haas/Lanigan team flew straight from his second-place finish at the 24 Hours of Le Mans with Peugeot to be the quickest man overall during Champ Car’s testing sessions at the Road America circuit in Elkhart Lake.
The two-day test period served as preparation for round five of the Champ Car World Series, this weekend at Cleveland. Second quickest was the Frenchman’s rookie teammate, Graham Rahal.
"I've been awake for 24 hours after racing a 24 hour race so I'm a little tired," Bourdais joked. “But we went through the main things we wanted and the baseline setup on the car was good. In the afternoon the conditions changed so we weren't able to improve much, but I think we learned some things.”
At 4.048 miles, Road America is the longest circuit on the Champ Car calendar. The track is ultra-demanding for the Bridgestone tyres, not only because of its sheer extension but also due to the uncannily high average speeds for a road course – over 140 miles per hour in Champ Car’s case. It truly is an old-school circuit, worthy of its “America’s Spa” nickname.
The circuit has been largely renovated for the ’07 season. Chief among the changes is the replacement of the Turn 13 bridge, site of some shocking crashes such as Memo Gidley’s in 2001. Access from the complex’s entrance to the infield is now through a tunnel.
“From a safety perspective it is an improvement to add the tunnel," says Conquest Racing driver Jan Heylen, third on the first-day timesheets. “The track was a little more challenging with the bridge, but safety is the number one priority. All of the changes are quite nice, especially the bigger curbs in Turn 5.”
The Champ Car GP of Road America is scheduled for August 12.