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Bourdais slams stewards over start

Champ Car World Series leader Sebastien Bourdais was heavily critical of the race officials for their handling of a contentious start at Portland

Bourdais' four-round winning streak came to an end after he dropped from third to seventh as the race began.

The initial start was waved off because polesitter Bruno Junqueira had moved too far ahead, but the second attempt proved even more chaotic, with the field crossing the startline already three and four abreast. Despite this, the race was allowed to continue.

"I think it was probably the most frustrating race I've ever been a part of," Bourdais said.

"If you think the first start was ugly, I think the second one was probably about the worst thing I've ever seen in my life. From there on, after that, you're trying to make up for mistakes that people did to you and the entire line I was part of.

"The McDonald's car was probably the class of the field today. You know, we are trying to make a little bit of history here, but I guess some people thought different. We never really got a chance to fight for it.

"They keep on throwing the green flag before they can even see things, make any kind of sense of how it looks. So basically if you do that, well, you expose yourself to a really screwed-up start.

"The first attempt, yeah, it wasn't that pretty. Bruno started pretty early. Everybody wasn't completely there, but at least the order was making sense.

"The second one, Bruno slowed down quite a bit to pack everybody up, like he was probably instructed to. They threw the green at the same moment as he just kind of backed off a little bit.

"All the left line just passed us. By the time I crossed the start/finish line, I probably was sixth. It was just a mess.

"Don't take me wrong, I'm not bitching at the results. Under any other circumstances, I would have kept my third place, keep my mouth shut and just move on.

"I think to lose that way is just about the worst thing that can happen to a race car driver. You got one of the best cars out there. You're busting your butt. To get that, I don't think it's fair.

"I mean, if they don't want Newman/Haas to win, they should just say it, save us the time to qualifying and make us leave at the back of the pack and at least we'll see what we can do."

Junqueira was less outspoken than his teammate, but agreed that he had been wrong-footed by the officials' decision to wave the green.

"In the meeting with the starter, I told him where I was going to accelerate and I was not at full throttle when Race Control decided to throw the green earlier than we talked about," he said.

But Justin Wilson, who started alongside Bourdais on row two, felt that Junqueira was to blame for the startline mayhem.

"From my perspective Bruno made a mistake and caught Sebastien out," said Wilson. "Everyone was in line. Everyone was ready to go.

"Bruno jumped on the brakes to, I think, try and catch AJ (Allmendinger) out and got it all wrong. He hit the brakes right as the starter thought everything was fine."

Bourdais eventually recovered to third place,with Junqueira taking a distant fourth.

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