Sebastien Bourdais Tag

By Luis Torres, Staff Writer Successful INDYCAR engineer Craig Hampson makes the jump from Dale Coyne Racing to Arrow McLaren SP as the team announced Monday that he’ll be their Race and R&D Engineer in 2020. Hampson becomes the third notable DCR personnel that’s no longer with the team in a span of three months, putting them in a tough spot as far as how they’ll fare in the upcoming NTT IndyCar Series campaign. In late October, Santino Ferrucci’s race engineer Michael Cannon joined Chip Ganassi Racing to help five-time championRead More

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 David Morgan, Associate Editor MADISON, Ill. – Josef Newgarden’s hot streak entering the weekend at World Wide Technology Raceway keeps on rolling as the championship points leader in the NTT IndyCar Series will start from pole for Saturday night’s Bommarito Automotive Group 500. Rolling off last in the qualifying order, Newgarden laid down a two-lap average of 186.508 mph, knocking Sebastien Bourdais off the provisional pole and taking it for himself. The pole is his second straight and third of the 2019 season. Newgarden is no stranger to successRead 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