Dale Coyne Racing with Vasser-Sullivan Tag

By Luis Torres, Staff Writer The latest twist to the NTT IndyCar Series off-season involves four-time Indy car champion Sebastien Bourdais as Dale Coyne Racing released him Friday. First broken by RACER and later confirmed by the team, they’ll be eyeing for another driver heading into the 2020 season, leaving Bourdais out of a ride. Coyne thanked Bourdais for his tremendous contributions, highlighted with back-to-back victories at the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg in 2017 and 2018. “I want to thank Sebastien for having the confidence to come back fromRead More

By Luis Torres, Staff Writer MONTEREY, California – Felix Rosenqvist will head into the final qualifying session Saturday afternoon with tremendous optimism after setting the fastest time of final practice for the Firestone Grand Prix of Monterey at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. The NTT IndyCar Series Rookie of the Year points leader set a time of 1:10.4065, beating the Team Penske trio of Josef Newgarden, Will Power and Simon Pagenaud as the last 45-minute session was chaotic. Although no stoppages occurred, several drivers struggled finding the perfect lap at the 2.238-mileRead More

By Luis Torres, Staff Writer PORTLAND, Ore. – Two-time Grand Prix of Portland winner Sebastien Bourdais went from putting on a flyer one lap to crashing the Turn 12 barrier the very next lap. Bourdais ran 12 laps during Friday afternoon’s practice session, with the last one being his best with a time of 57.9123 seconds (122.069 mph), knocking Will Power off the top the charts by 0.0289 seconds with just over two minutes remaining. Then a little de ja vu struck when the right front of his No. 18 SealMasterRead More

By Luis Torres, Staff Writer MADISON, Ill. — Sebastien Bourdais hasn’t had a front row start since Phoenix last season when he won the pole. That’ll change as the Dale Coyne Racing with Vasser-Sullivan driver set a two-lap qualifying average speed of 186.083 mph (48.4062 total seconds), good enough to start alongside pole sitter and NTT IndyCar Series championship leader Josef Newgarden at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway. Bourdais was the 13th driver to hit the 1.25-mile oval as oil laying in Turn 1 due to an Vintage Indy RegistryRead More

By Christopher DeHarde, Staff Writer If there ever was a Rubik’s Cube of an oval, it would have to be Pocono Raceway. A two and a half mile superspeedway with three straightaways of differing lengths and corners of differing radii and banking gives every engineer throughout the Indy car paddock their biggest oval racing setup challenge of the year. The No. 18 Dale Coyne Racing with Vasser Sullivan entry performed well last year at Pocono. Driver Sebastien Bourdais finished fourth with race engineer Craig Hampson helping get the setup right, butRead More

By Christopher DeHarde, Staff Writer LEXINGTON, Ohio — Sebastien Bourdais can breathe a sigh of relief knowing there’s only two rows of cars in front of him instead of 11 this year. Last year, the Frenchman started last at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course when the NTT IndyCar Series came to town. This year, Bourdais managed to qualify fifth for Sunday’s Honda Indy 200. Of course, Bourdais had a great car last year and finished sixth in the race, but there was a lot of work he had to do to makeRead More

By Christopher DeHarde, Staff Writer TORONTO — Sebastien Bourdais and Takuma Sato both qualified in the top 10 for Sunday’s Honda Indy Toronto but it was what happened at the end of Practice 3 that helped define the rest of their day on Saturday. At the end of the Saturday morning practice session, the NTT IndyCar Series gave all drivers time to do one flying lap following a red flag for Graham Rahal spinning into the tire barrier at Turn 1. Sato came out ahead of Bourdais since the Japanese driver’sRead More

By Luis Torres, Staff Writer FORT WORTH, Texas — Friday’s qualifying proved to show that track conditions was everything at Texas Motor Speedway, and it proved to be beneficial for Sebastien Bourdais. After floundering in the bottom top half of the field in both practice sessions, Bourdais turned it around with a solid showing. His No. 18 SealMaster Honda was one of the four fastest Hondas on the grid after setting a two-lap average of 219.746 mph. While his superspeedway pole drought that dates back to Las Vegas in 2005 continues,Read More

By Christopher DeHarde, Staff Writer BIRMINGHAM, Alabama– An originally-planned two-stop strategy was Sebastien Bourdais’ best chance to win Sunday’s Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama at Barber Motorsports Park for the NTT IndyCar Series. At least, that’s what his race engineer Craig Hampson thought. “We probably aren’t going to win the race just doing the same thing as everybody else so let’s try to do something different and win the race,” said Hampson. Team owner Dale Coyne said to the team that Bourdais was committed to running the strategy and theRead More

By Christopher DeHarde, Staff Writer AUSTIN, Texas– Sebastien Bourdais did not have a good practice or qualifying ahead of Sunday’s INDYCAR Classic at Circuit Of The Americas but sometimes luck can fall your way in the NTT IndyCar Series and that’s exactly what happened for the Frenchman. The No. 18 Sealmaster Honda for Dale Coyne Racing with Vasser/Sullivan started off 17th out of 24 cars and got up to 15th on the first lap of the race. While overtaking may have been a bit of a premium, Bourdais was on theRead More