Motorsports

Bourdais gets first start in Indy 500

By BRANT JAMES
Published April 19, 2005

It was a week that tested Sebastien Bourdais ' versatility.

On April 10, Bourdais, 26, won Champ Car's season-opening race at Long Beach with a deft late pass of Paul Tracy .

On Tuesday, his Newman Haas team announced it secured sponsorship to field cars for Bourdais and teammate Bruno Junqueira in the Indianapolis 500 on May 29, giving the Champ Car champion and Tampa resident his first start in open-wheel racing's most storied event.

On Friday night, Bourdais led 52 of 67 laps and held off Mark Martin at Texas Motor Speedway to win in his second International Race of Champions event, becoming the first open-wheel driver since Buddy Lazier in 2002 to win one of the all-star races.

Bourdais will need to be as resilent in the weeks leading up the Indy 500.

"I guess it's going to ask a lot of me," Bourdais said by phone Monday. "I have to try to adapt even faster than what I usually do. Although we will do a lot of days of testing in Indy, we will only stay the first week, then go to Monterrey (Mexico, for a Champ Car race)."

Bourdais said Junqueira would have driven at Indy had a second sponsorship not materialized. Last year, Junqueira finished fifth in the team's first Indy 500 since the Indy Racing League-CART (Champ Car) split in 1995.

Though he stressed that reunification of the leagues "makes more sense now than it ever did," Bourdais said Newman Haas' double entry should not be misconstrued as a first step toward switching leagues.

"Newman Haas has strictly been related to Champ Car and dedicated to Champ Car," he said. "There is no plan to switch, but it would make all our lives easier if we could have one (league) and not wonder which side we have to pick."

TALKS: SpeedTV.com reported Monday that IRL chief executive officer Tony George held discussions with Champ Car president Dick Eidswick last week about reuniting the competing open-wheel series.

George, according to the report, proposed buying Champ Car, but co-owners Kevin Kalkhoven , Gerald Forsythe and Paul Gentilozzi prefer a partnership. George tried to buy certain Champ Car assets in bankruptcy court in December 2003, but a judge awarded them to the three car owners who turned the league into a private company.

A first step toward reunification could be the establishment of common engine and chassis templates by 2007, when both series are due to make changes in their programs.

NEW TRICKS: There appears to be some fight left in 48-year-old Ricky Rudd . The NASCAR Nextel Cup veteran driver was 37th in points two weeks ago, putting him outside the group guaranteed starting spots and forcing him to qualify, but his seventh-place finish at Martinsville and eighth at Texas Sunday bumped him to 30th. "We know we're pretty good, but we've got some tweaking to do," he said. "We've got a solid team, but we can't do anything about buying bad luck. We've had our share of it and now it's swinging the other way."

Sterling Marlin , 47, was fifth on Sunday, moving him sixth spots to sixth in the standings behind points leader Jimmie Johnson ; Rusty Wallace , 48, was 10th, moving him four spots to third in his final season before retirement.

"We're looking at the big picture," Wallace said. "We've got four top 10s in the first seven races, but we haven't won yet and that's what we're really wanting to do right now. Our goals are to win and be a part of the Chase."

Mark Martin , 44, is seventh in points and Dale Jarrett , 48, is 10th.

INDY DEATH: Art Cross , the first Indianapolis 500 rookie of the year, is dead at 87. He died Friday in his hometown of LaPorte, Ind. He was the defending AAA midget champion when he made his first start at Indy in 1952. He finished fifth and was named top rookie, the first year the award was presented. The next year, he was runnerup to Bill Vukovich . He was 11th in 1954 and 17th in 1955.

--Information from the Associated Press was used in the report.

[Last modified April 19, 2005, 01:20:12]