Sebastien Bourdais took a conclusive win on the 2.104-mile Fundidora Park road circuit in Monterrey, Mexico. The Frenchman, driving one of Newman/Haas Racing’s Lola performed flawlessly in the second race of the 2004 season beating his team mate, Bruno Junqueira by 3.852 seconds to round out a perfect day for Carl Haas and Paul Newman’s team.
Bourdais dominated both qualifying sessions and the 72-lap Monterrey Grand Prix, leading the most laps and setting the fastest lap of the race. Bourdais now has the points lead (63) over Junqueira’s (57) and 2003 champion Paul Tracy who finished 7th at Monterrey in stifling conditions that saw track temperatures soar to 128 degrees.
Bourdais’ team made a myriad of changes to his Lola after the warm-up and those adjustments worked out perfectly for the bespectacled Frenchman. “We shifted the weight, changed the front wing, did so many things it’s unbelievable it all worked out,” Bourdais revealed.
Junqueira was also delighted with a good team performance and said. “It was a very good race between me and Sebastien. We were much faster than everybody,” Junqueira added.
Mario Dominguez pleased the fans on his home turf by taking the final podium position in the Herdez Lola, with a stirring drive that gained him a point for biggest position gain when he came back through the field after a first lap spin. “What an unbelievable day. I just can’t say enough about my team, they are the best. We had a good start and then I just lost it on the cold tyres. My engineer told me they were working up a great strategy and to just drive as hard as I could. Canadian veteran Patrick Carpentier took fourth place in the race and retains fourth place championship points with 48, one in front of Dominguez.
Alex Tagliani brought the Rocketsports Lola to fifth, saying. “Despite the problems we had getting qualified close to the front of the grid, the team gave me a great car, a podium car, and we worked together to develop a good strategy”.
British rookie Justin Wilson earned sixth place points in the Conquest Lola in what was only his second Champ Car event. The former Minardi and Jaguar F1 driver further enhanced his reputation with a solid drive that saw him almost catch Tagliani on the final lap.
A crowd of more than 94,000 enjoyed an incident-filled contest with six caution flags. Even so Bourdais and his 17 pursuers set a new race time record of 1:45:01.498. Lola runners comprised all 13 finishers of the sun-drenched event.
The Champ Car World Series resumes the evening of Saturday, June 5th as the Champ Car circus heads to the historic Milwaukee Mile.
RACE RESULTS
Pos - Driver - Nat - Team - Chassis - Laps - Gap - Status 1. Sebastien Bourdais - F - Newman/Haas Racing - Lola - 72 - Running 2. Bruno Junqueira - BR - Newman/Haas Racing - Lola - 72 - 3.852 - Running 3. Mario Dominguez - MEX - Herdez Competition - Lola - 72 - 5.209 - Running 4. Patrick Carpentier - CDN - Forsythe Racing - Lola - 72 - 6.119 - Running 5. Alex Tagliani - CDN - Rocketsports Racing - Lola - 72 - 9.900 - Running 6. Justin Wilson - GB - Conquest Racing - Lola - 72 - 11.368 - Running 7. Paul Tracy - CDN - Forsythe Racing - Lola - 72 - 17.047 - Running 8. Ryan Hunter-Reay - USA - Herdez Competition - Lola - 72 - 22.251 - Running 9. Roberto Gonzalez - MEX - PKV Racing - Lola - 72 - 26.764 - Running 10. Nelson Philippe - F - Rocketsports Racing - Lola - 72 - 27.925 - Running 11. Michel Jourdain Jr. - MEX - RuSPORT - Lola - 72 - 29.197 - Running 12. Jimmy Vasser - USA - PKV Racing - Lola - 71 - 13.911 - Spun13. Rodolfo Lavin - MEX - Forsythe Racing - Lola - 70 - 2 Laps - Running 14. Oriol Servia - E - Dale Coyne Racing - Lola - 70 - 2 Laps - Running 15. Mario Haberfeld - BR - Walker Racing - Reynard - 62 - 1 Lap - Accident 16. Alex Sperafico - BR - Conquest Racing - Reynard - 46 - 12 Laps - Accident17. A.J. Allmendinger - USA - RuSPORT - Lola - 24 - 34 Laps - Fire 18. Tarso Marques - BR - Dale Coyne Racing - Lola - 11 - 46 Laps - Mechanical
