Tracy Blunder Gifts Bourdais Win

Even better news from the Frenchman's point of view was that his latest success came at the expense of chief protagonist Paul Tracy, who threw away victory with an elementary error at two-thirds distance.

Bourdais was running ten seconds behind Tracy at the time and was gifted the win on a silver platter.

"I don't know if it was the golden horseshoe, but definitely PT did his own damage today," said the Newman/Haas driver, who doubled his Championship lead over Tracy to 52 points with five rounds remaining.

"He was running really hard the whole race, and unfortunately after the start when he kind of pushed me wide, I had to give up second position to AJ [Allmendinger]. I knew it was really going to be difficult to pass him; it took me a while to get it done and by the time I did Paul was already eight or nine seconds ahead.

"So from there we worked really hard and tried to save a bit of fuel. We were matching his speed but weren't really much faster, so we both kept running hard, he made a mistake and we won the race."

Tracy started from pole and took advantage of Bourdais being delayed behind Allmendinger in the early laps to build a commanding lead.

An otherwise exemplary performance was ruined by a momentary lapse on lap 63, when he glanced the wall at the apex of Turn Three and was thrown off-line and virtually head-on into the outside wall (albeit at relatively low speed).

The impact ripped off the nosecone and crumpled the right-hand side of the #3 Forsythe Lola and Tracy was eliminated from the race on the spot.

Mario Dominguez salvaged a modicum of pride for the Forsythe team by finishing a strong second, his first podium since joining the Indianapolis-based squad this season.

The Mexican made hard work for himself, however, after sliding down the escape road and dropping from second to fourth just minutes after teammate Tracy's blunder.

He mounted an impressive recovery in the remaining laps, gaining one place when the luckless Timo Glock succumbed to a broken gearbox and then diving inside Allmendinger at the last corner on the penultimate lap.

The young Californian was relieved just to see the chequered flag after crashing out of each of the last three races, and drove a disciplined race with a RuSPORT car that was clearly a bit of a handful.

Oriol Servia came away with another useful helping of points for fourth place, but on this occasion the Spaniard was never a factor and at one stage was even lapped by Newman/Haas teammate Bourdais.

Rodolfo Lavin kept his nose clean to claim fifth in only his second race with the HVM team, ahead of Ryan Hunter-Reay (Rocketsports) and Dale Coyne Racing rookies Ronnie Bremer and Ricardo Sperafico.

Mi-Jack Conquest Racing teammates Andrew Ranger and Nelson Philippe rounded out the top ten, but the teenagers would have finished much higher had they not incurred penalties for separate infractions under the full-course caution that was triggered by Tracy's crash.

RuSPORT's Justin Wilson got no further than the first corner after being assaulted by Cristiano da Matta's PKV Racing machine. The Brazilian's banzai move under braking triggered a five-car pile-up and also ruined teammate Jimmy Vasser's race - a shame as the veteran American set the second fastest lap after a long pit stop for repairs.

Pos  Driver              Team                   Time
 1.  Sebastien Bourdais  Newman Haas            1h 49:45.135
 2.  Mario Dominguez     Forsythe Championship  +     15.269
 3.  A.J. Allmendinger   RuSPORT                +     17.207
 4.  Oriol Servia        Newman Haas            +     35.775
 5.  Rodolfo Lavin       HVM, Inc.              +     37.629
 6.  Ryan Hunter-Reay    Rocketsports           +     43.237
 7.  Ronnie Bremer       Dale Coyne             +     47.487
 8.  Ricardo Sperafico   Dale Coyne             +     52.470
 9.  Nelson Philippe     Mi-Jack Conquest       +   1:02.902
10.  Andrew Ranger       Mi-Jack Conquest       +     1 lap
11.  Bjorn Wirdheim      HVM, Inc.              +     1 lap
12.  Marcus Marshall     Team Australia         +     3 laps
13.  Timo Glock          Rocketsports           +     9 laps
14.  Alex Tagliani       Team Australia         +    15 laps
15.  Jimmy Vasser        PKV                    +    32 laps
16.  Paul Tracy          Forsythe Championship  +    35 laps
17.  Justin Wilson       RuSPORT                -
18.  Cristiano da Matta  PKV                    -

Fastest lap: Bourdais, 1:00.574 on lap 81