Easy win for Bourdais

Bourdais' cause was helped enormously by the traditional Cleveland first corner melee, which eliminated front row starters Paul Tracy and Justin Wilson. As the field fanned out across the ultra-wide main runway, Wilson found himself caught in no man's land between Tracy on the outside and Alex Tagliani on the inside.

Approaching the hairpin the Brit ducked out to the right, only to find an impossibly late-braking Tagliani steaming down the inside and directly into his path. Wilson saw the Canadian at the last instant and swerved left in avoidance, but in the process he tripped over Tracy, and both cars were damaged beyond repair.

Bourdais took full advantage of the confusion and clear racetrack to drive away into a race of his own.

"This was probably the easiest race of my short Champ Car career," he said. "There was the pile-up in Turn 1 at the start of the race, all I could see was smoke, I aimed for the apex, then realised there was no one around me."

Team-mate Bruno Junqueira was delayed and had to mount a flat-out charge for the rest of the distance to claim the runner-up spot and cement another Newman-Haas 1-2.

Tagliani recovered from his first corner travails and another off-course excursion to finish third in his Rocketsports Lola, while Oriol Servia came home a splendid fourth for the shoestring Dale Coyne operation. The Spaniard was in the right place at the right time at the first corner, vaulting from 13th on the grid to fourth, but showed an impressive turn of speed with his fastest lap being bettered only by the Newman-Haas duo.

Jimmy Vasser finished fifth for PKV Racing, just staving off a charging AJ Allmendinger, who spent much of the race in catch-up mode after a 360-degree spin and an early pit stop.

RuSPORT team-mate Michel Jourdain Jr led several laps thanks to an out-of-sequence pit strategy, and looked set for a podium finish when he snagged the wall coming out of Turn 8 just before half-distance. The impact was enough to break a front suspension upright and the Mexican had to park his car on the grass a few laps later with the left-front wheel at a very drunken angle.

Bourdais' win means that he now trails the ever-consistent Junqueira by a single point in the championship standings. Patrick Carpentier lies a distant third after retiring in the early stages at Cleveland with a massive - and uncharacteristic - Ford-Cosworth engine blow-up.

Tracy, meanwhile, languishes in sixth place, 48 points adrift of arch-rival Junqueira. If he is to retain his Champ Car crown, his home race in Toronto next weekend would be a good place to start turning things around.