Bourdais Fights Hard at Pocono

By Christopher DeHarde, Staff Writer

LONG POND, PA — Sebastien Bourdais had his second top-10 finish in a row in Sunday’s ABC Supply 500 at Pocono Raceway as the 2018 Verizon IndyCar Series winner at St. Petersburg finished fourth.

After an hour and 56 minute red flag after the Lap 7 incident involving Robert Wickens, Ryan Hunter-Reay, James Hinchcliffe, Takuma Sato and Pietro Fittipaldi, Bourdais showed concern over the condition of the catch fencing repair job at Pocono.

“Just look at it, it’s a damned disgrace,” said Bourdais. “You look at something, they give a thumbs up to something where cables are loose and hanging off and you’ve got a patch of mesh and stuff that’s hanging off, I don’t know. I don’t know what they’re thinking, I’m just glad nobody went to try and see how strong or weak the thing was because I don’t think it would’ve been pretty.

“Honestly the big risk is the start and restart when there’s a lot of wheel-to-wheel action so I wasn’t too worried about it once we got going and we’re all stretched out but I’m glad nobody tried it.”

Once the race got restarted, the remaining laps were run without interruption from a caution flag. Bourdais ran around fifth-sixth place before leapfrogging Josef Newgarden shortly after halfway during a cycle of pit stops. Once Marco Andretti fell out of the top five, Bourdais settled in and finished fourth, the last car on the lead lap. Despite many efforts, Bourdais could not find a way past third place finisher Scott Dixon.

“Scott’s so strong in those events, he backs up the corner and gets going on the way out, there’s no way past,” said Bourdais. “He’s just too smart, too good at it and on top of that he’s fighting for the championship. I tried but he never put a wheel wrong and there was no way past. Just pretty happy for us to get a fourth place out of this, it was a pretty solid effort from the team.”

The next Verizon IndyCar Series race is the Bommarito Automotive Group 500 at Gateway Motorsports Park on Saturday, August 25th.