Edmonton, Alberta – Sebastien Bourdais came up with an unlikely victory Sunday in the inaugural Grand Prix of Edmonton, and all it took was a mistake-free race on a day when nearly everyone else was messing up.
The reigning Champ Car World Series champion came from a 10th-place start after crashing in qualifying Friday and captured his first victory since the season opener in April at Long Beach.
The Frenchman was able to slice through heavy traffic on the fast, 1.973-mile, 14-turn circuit and move into contention, but it took mistakes by A.J. Allmendinger and his RuSport teammate Justin Wilson of England to give Bourdais a shot at the 12th victory of his career.
Oriol Servia, subbing for injured Bruno Junqueira, also avoided trouble and gave the Newman/Haas Racing team a 1-2 sweep, finishing 0.596 of a second – about 10 car-lengths – behind his teammate.
“It was a pretty unexpected win today. I would have been happy with a top five,” Bourdais said after celebrating with some smoking doughnuts in front of 78,080 spectators, most of whom were cheering for Canadian driver Paul Tracy, who finished third.
“I was just hanging on, trying not to make a mistake,” Bourdais added. “There were some faster drivers out there, but they all made mistakes. I don’t know, maybe they were all tired. This is a very, very tough track.”
Allmendinger, a 23-year-old from Thornton and last year’s top rookie, started from the pole for the first time in his career. He appeared on the way to his first victory until he bounced off the wall, damaging his transmission, while leading just 8 laps from the end of the 88-lap event. The frustrated Allmendinger, who led a race-high 40 laps, wound up 14th.
Wilson appeared to get a break when a crash by Bjorn Wirdheim brought out the second full-course caution flag on lap 76. The Englishman was trying to conserve fuel as he trailed his teammate and tried to stay ahead of the hard-charging Bourdais.
As the cars picked up speed for a restart on lap 79, Wilson suddenly spun out. He fell all the way to eighth place before getting back in line. He wound up fourth, just behind Tracy.
Bourdais, who was in third and had trailed the RuSport duo by nearly 22 seconds before Wirdheim’s accident, was shocked when Wilson and then Allmendinger slipped up just ahead of him.
“I couldn’t believe it when I saw Justin spin in front of me and then A.J. made a small mistake – and that’s all it took out there was a really small mistake,” Bourdais said. “(Allmendinger) probably deserved this year. He was fast all day long.”
