Bourdais leads title with Edmonton win
Sebastien Bourdais launched himself back into the championship lead with victory at the Grand Prix of Edmonton this afternoon, while his rivals for the 2007 Champ Car title had a miserable race
Team Australia's Will Power had a steering rack failure, and Robert Doornbos of Minardi Team USA was knocked into a spin after a collision with Alex Tagliani of RSPORTS at Turn 1. The Dutchman had to content himself with 11th place, a lap down on Bourdais.
In second and third places came Justin Wilson (RSPORTS) and Graham Rahal (Newman/Haas/Lanigan), who recovered from relatively poor starts to apply some pressure to Power then Bourdais.
However, although Rahal just might have had the pace to threaten his teammate, he was never able to prove it as he could not pass Wilson.
Simon Pagenaud scored his best result of the season as some solace to Team Australia, who also clinched the Canadian Triple Crown, an award for the best team in the three Canadian races.
Paul Tracy and Oriol Servia had a quiet, mistake-free day rising from their disastrous seventh-row qualifying performance, and with some aggressive passes, good pitstops and quality restarts, held off Bruno Junqueira (Dale Coyne Racing) to take fifth and sixth places.
Neel Jani of PKV Racing was the big loser in this race. Having beaten Wilson to snatch third place at the start, the Swiss stalled at his first pitstop sending him tumbling to the bottom of the running order.
Although he then recovered to reach as high as seventh, he had used all his push-to-pass, and was overtaken by Junqueira and Minardi's Dan Clarke in the final stint of the race.
Katherine Legge was forced to retire after her gearbox jammed in seventh and her throttle kept sticking open, while series returnee Mario Dominguez had an unhappy time in the second PKV. He posted the race's first DNF as he appeared to suffer an engine failure on lap 33.
Classified: Pos Driver Team Time 1. Sebastien Bourdais Newman/Haas/Lanigan 1h45:41.953 2. Justin Wilson RSPORTS + 3.947 3. Graham Rahal Newman/Haas/Lanigan + 6.645 4. Simon Pagenaud Team Australia + 24.808 5. Paul Tracy Forsythe Championship + 28.144 6. Oriol Servia Forsythe Championship + 30.015 7. Bruno Junqueira Dale Coyne + 30.704 8. Dan Clarke Minardi Team USA + 35.333 9. Neel Jani PKV + 37.782 10. Jan Heylen Conquest + 58.747 11. Robert Doornbos Minardi Team USA + 1 Lap 12. Ryan Dalziel Pacific Coast Motorsports + 1 Lap 13. Alex Figge Pacific Coast Motorsports + 1 Lap Not classified: Driver Team Laps Alex Tagliani RSPORTS 69 Will Power Team Australia 69 Katherine Legge Dale Coyne 36 Mario Dominguez PKV 32 Fastest lap: Bourdais, 58.653 on lap 93
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