The 2005 Champ Car Season Review

The Rivals: Seabass v PT

For the first time since the turn of the century, there was a discernible improvement in the overall depth of the Champ Car field compared to the previous year. As in 2004, however, one man, and one team, stood head and shoulders above the rest: Sebastien Bourdais and Newman/Haas Racing.

Their respective records speak volumes. Bourdais won six of the 13 races (four more than anyone else) and took five pole positions in the course of a successful title defence, while his Illinois-based team scored a total of eight victories and finished 1-2 in the points standings for the second straight year. Week in and week out, Newman/Haas remained the yardstick against which all the other teams measured themselves.

As ever, the key ingredients were the quality and exceptionally low turnover of their key personnel and a vast databank of set-up information that made the rest of the paddock green with envy.

A particular source of advantage was the team's well-honed suspension and shock absorber package, which manifested itself in the peerless stability of the Newman/Haas cars over the kerbs, bumps and surface changes that are the routine working environment at Champ Car's road and street tracks. And the fact that the team posted only a single retirement all season (a broken driveshaft for Oriol Servia at Portland) was testament to the usual impeccable standards of preparation.

Although he came out of the blocks strongly with a convincing win at Long Beach, it took Bourdais nearly half the season to hit his stride. In Monterrey, Mexico, he made life difficult for himself after a failed passing attempt on Forsythe Racing's Paul Tracy - an egregious error and the first of three contentious collisions with his arch-rival. He had no answer for Tracy's speed on the Milwaukee Mile oval, and at Portland in June he was foiled by an untimely full-course yellow.

Perfectionist that he is, Bourdais wasn't at all satisfied with the way his season was going and took to muttering a little too plaintively about his misfortunes. The bottom line was that, whatever the frustrations, he had scored enough points on each occasion to leave round 6 in Toronto with a narrow championship lead over Tracy.

Moreover, his luck was about to turn around - and how. An unlikely win from 10th on the grid at Edmonton's airfield course was the launchpad for an almost unbroken run of victories over the balance of the season.

Although he is prone to the occasional bouts of 'red mist' in crunch situations (usually when in combat with Tracy!), Bourdais is a cool customer out of the car with a sharp, analytical mind and a steely streak, qualities he shares with his race engineer Craig Hampson. The closeness of their relationship has been the linchpin of the Frenchman's success, which has seen him win more than one-third of the races in his three-year Champ Car career to date - a remarkable strike rate by any standards. With the current technical formula set to remain in place for one more year, Bourdais stands every chance of becoming the first driver in the modern era of the series to win three successive titles.

Not if Tracy has anything to do with it, of course. The Canadian was as irrepressible as ever this season and took the fight to Bourdais with obvious relish, whether they were rubbing wheels on the track or exchanging broadsides over the airwaves.

In the first half of the season PT drove consistently well: He was in a class of his own at Milwaukee and soundly beat Bourdais at Cleveland, while his Herculean performance in his home town of Toronto - where he led for lap after lap despite a broken front wing following (you guessed it) a dust-up with Bourdais - was arguably the drive of the year.

But then it all started to unravel. The turning point was Denver, where Tracy threw away an easy victory with an inexplicable lapse of concentration at two-thirds distance. Even worse, the beneficiary was Bourdais; instead of halting the momentum the Frenchman had built up with consecutive wins in Edmonton and San Jose, Tracy handed him the hat-trick on a plate.

By the end of September, his hopes of reclaiming the title he had won in 2003 had been well and truly snuffed out. First he came off worse in another clash with Bourdais at Las Vegas (of which he was the principal cause), and then Champ Car was forced to cancel its foray to South Korea, giving Bourdais an all but insurmountable lead with just two races remaining.

Tracy's wayward drive in last weekend's Mexico City finale - featuring a great start, a pair of incidents, a penalty for blocking followed by an epic recovery drive, all capped off by a demon restart that took him to an improbable third place - was a microcosm of his entire career. But there is no denying his box office appeal; nor the fact that despite (perhaps even because of) his mercurial personality, he has been one of the most loyal and articulate advocates of the Champ Car cause through thick, thin and thinner over the last few years.

Pretenders to the throne

Servia started the season with the under-funded Dale Coyne Racing squad with which he had achieved some impressive giant-killing feats last year. He got his big break with Newman/Haas in unfortunate circumstances, following a violent accident for Bruno Junqueira in May's Indianapolis 500 that left the Brazilian with spinal injuries and a broken left ankle. Junqueira's rehabilitation has been going well and he expects to be fit to return to the cockpit by December, but his lay-off was doubly disappointing as he was leading the Champ Car standings at the time (fresh from victory in round 2 at Monterrey) and was confident of giving Bourdais a serious run for his money.

Servia did a thoroughly professional job as stand-in, delivering a podium finish on his first outing for the team at Milwaukee and following that up with half a dozen more as the season progressed. If he could be faulted, it was for a lack of out-and-out qualifying pace relative to Bourdais - who Servia genially referred to as "the fastest driver in the world" - and an understandable reluctance to upset the Newman/Haas apple cart in wheel-to-wheel racing situations (Edmonton was a case in point).

Perhaps the 31-year-old Spaniard, who is one of the most universally popular drivers in the Champ Car paddock, was simply too much of a team player for his own good at times. But his loyalty and service may yet be rewarded with a permanent place in the Newman/Haas stable, if the team's plans to run a third car next season come to fruition.

In any event, Servia revelled in the experience of working with a truly top-line team for the first time and notched up a pair of career milestones: his first pole position (at Surfers' Paradise) and a maiden victory (in Montreal, his first race win of any kind since a French Formula Three race at Albi in 1997).

Wilson was a revelation to many Stateside observers, though not to anyone who had followed his career in the junior formulae or even his abortive stint in Formula One. In his second year of Champ Cars, the former Formula 3000 Champion graduated from Eric Bachelart's well-run but modest Conquest Racing outfit to a team whose budget was more commensurate with his ability: RuSPORT.

Wilson immediately flourished in his new environment, finishing fourth in each of the first three races and then dominating the Portland weekend until succumbing to an engine failure shortly before half-distance. He only had to wait another two races for his first Champ Car win, earning it the hard way with an incisive pass on Servia in the closing stages of the Molson Indy Toronto.

At that stage it looked as if Wilson might contend for the title, but Bourdais' midsummer streak put paid to that and the lanky Englishman had to settle for an extremely creditable third place in the championship. He blotted his copybook with unnecessary collisions at Cleveland and Surfers Paradise, and threw away a potential victory at Edmonton in the most embarrassing fashion, spinning while warming his tyres during a full-course yellow. But in rounding out the season with a consummate win in Mexico City, he laid down a marker for 2006 and gave Bourdais, Tracy and Co. plenty to think about over the winter.

Wilson's teammate A.J. Allmendinger had a bittersweet season, one in which he underlined his credentials as one of America's brightest prospects in a generation even as he suffered a succession of morale-sapping knocks. The most heart-rending of these came at Edmonton in July, where he snatched defeat from the jaws of a maiden victory in a moment's over-exuberance, then slumped inconsolably in his car for several minutes before alighting to tell the TV audience: "I just screwed up like I always do".

Allmendinger's candour in owning up to his mistakes is one of his most appealing characteristics, and not a trait one is accustomed to expect from the genus racing driver. But crashing out of three races in a row in the summer prompted an almost unhealthy degree of introspection and self-criticism in a man who, after all, was only 23 years old and in his second season of Champ Car racing.

A victory may have eluded Allmendinger, but you get the impression that when the first one comes it will open the floodgates, such is his boundless potential.

Young Guns

These five drivers - Bourdais, Tracy, Servia, Wilson and Allmendinger - stood out from the crowd in 2005 and scooped most of the silverware, leaving meagre pickings for the rest.

But that's not to say there weren't other noteworthy performers. The rookie contingent was stronger than in 2004, with Timo Glock and Bjorn Wirdheim bringing distinguished European racing resumes and Andrew Ranger and Ronnie Bremer graduating from Toyota Atlantic (in Bremer's case after a promising early career in Europe ran out of momentum, a.k.a. funds).

Former Jordan Formula One test driver Glock proved to be the cream of the crop, comprehensively overshadowing his highly-rated teammate Ryan Hunter-Reay en route to Rookie of the Year honours and eighth place in the overall standings. The 23-year-old German carried the Rocketsports standard virtually single-handedly, and really came into his own in the second half of the year.

Strangely, he struggled in qualifying, a weakness that left both him and his engineers scratching their heads. But his stirring charge from the back of the field to third place in Denver ranked among the best individual performances of the season (but sadly went unrewarded when his gearbox seized), and in Montreal a fortnight later he came within an ace of winning only to be ordered by Race Control to cede the lead on the last lap because he had short-cut the course to stay ahead of Servia.

Instead he was pipped to the post by Ranger, who had a somewhat inconclusive rookie campaign spiced with occasional flashes of brilliance. The French-Canadian was short on experience but showed a maturity beyond his 18 years to finish second in the gruelling heat of Monterrey. However, after qualifying an excellent fourth at Cleveland he went off the boil in the second half of the season and was generally outperformed by teammate (and fellow teenager) Nelson Philippe.

Twilight Zone

At the other end of the experience spectrum were PKV Racing duo Cristiano da Matta and Jimmy Vasser. Much was expected of da Matta on his return to the Champ Car scene following a bruising interval in Formula One. After a shaky start, the 2002 series Champion duly found his form in late spring, winning with the help of a timely full-course caution at Portland and leading on merit at Cleveland until tangling with backmarker Marcus Marshall. But thereafter his season fell apart. The nadir came at Surfers Paradise, where for the second time in four races da Matta caused a multi-car crash at the start due to a crass error of judgement, perhaps born of frustration at PKV's lack of winning pace.

He redeemed himself somewhat by qualifying a strong fifth in Mexico City, but by then the question on everyone's lips was whether Vasser would hang up his helmet at the end of the year to concentrate on his team ownership role.

The laid-back Californian has made no secret of the fact that he's considering retirement in the interests of promoting young blood. Equally, however, he sees little point in vacating his seat unless his replacement is likely to be quicker. And while Vasser knows that he is in the twilight of his career, a late-season flourish that netted solid third-place finishes at Las Vegas and Surfers Paradise suggested that there may be life in the old dog yet...

The Top 10 drivers - a personal ranking

 1.  Sebastien Bourdais
 2.  Paul Tracy
 3.  Justin Wilson
 4.  Oriol Servia
 5.  A.J. Allmendinger
 6.  Timo Glock
 7.  Alex Tagliani
 8.  Mario Dominguez
 9.  Jimmy Vasser
10.  Ronnie Bremer