Sebastien Bourdais blitzed the Laguna Seca track record on his way to fastest time of the day on the final day of Spring Training.

The Frenchman lapped the 2.238-mile circuit in 1:05.880, beating the previous record, established by Ricardo Zonta in a Toyota Formula 1 car in 2006, by a substantial 0.429 seconds. The Newman/Haas/Lanigan driver's average speed was 122.295mph, and he was rewarded with a surprise $5,000 cheque from series owner Kevin Kalkhoven.

Bourdais' lap put him over half a second quicker than his nearest challenger Team Australia's Will Power, and six tenths of a second quicker than PKV Racing's Neel Jani, who just pipped the second Newman/Haas/Lanigan car of Graham Rahal.

The times were not entirely representative, as a major off by Bruno Junqueira in the Dale Coyne Racing car ended the session prematurely, but through the day, only Power had looked a consistent threat to Bourdais.

Paul Tracy, yesterday's pacesetter, missed a lot of set-up time as his Forsythe Championship Racing team needed to change his differential in the morning. All the drivers have been practising standing starts, both with and without launch control, hence the excessive strains on the diffs.

Atlantic champion Simon Pagenaud did an excellent job to back up Power's pace for Team Australia, finishing the day ahead of Tracy, and the RuSPORT and Rocketsports drivers Justin Wilson and Alex Tagliani. The Canadian and the Briton finished just 0.005 seconds apart.

Matt Halliday continued to impress with his pace in the Conquest Racing car, as ninth fastest driver (though 10th fastest car as Wilson set a quick time in both his race car and his spare). Halliday was just a second off Bourdais despite a number of mechanical niggles.

Robert Doornbos of Team Minardi USA had been fast in the morning, but a crash in the daunting Turn 6 (where temporary team mate Zsolt Baumgartner crashed yesterday) ended his hopes of getting into the top six.

Tristan Gommendy got much closer to PKV Racing team-mate Neel Jani's pace this morning, but admits he is physically out of shape and had to go home at lunch time after struggling to turn the steering wheel.

Day two combined times:

Pos Driver Team Time
1. Sebastien Bourdais Newman/Haas/Lanigan 1:05.880
2. Will Power Team Australia 1:06.424
3. Neel Jani PKV Racing 1:06.516
4. Graham Rahal Newman/Haas/Lanigan 1:06.561
5. Simon Pagenaud Team Australia 1:06.699
6. Justin Wilson RuSPORT 1:06.755
7. Alex Tagliani Rocketsports 1:06.760
8. Matt Halliday Conquest Racing 1:06.930
9. Robert Doornbos Minardi USA 1:06.959
10. Bruno Junqueira Dale Coyne Racing 1:07.048
11. Paul Tracy Forsythe 1:07.067
12. Katherine Legge Dale Coyne Racing 1:07.727
13. Tristan Gommendy PKV Racing 1:08.325
14. Alex Figge Pacific Coast 1:08.521
15. Ryan Dalziel Pacific Coast 1:08.825

Brazilian test driver Zonta - in a 2005-spec F1 car - was doing demonstration runs as part of the 'Monterey Historic Automobile Races' when he set that record. <doh>

So... if a non F1 test driver went and set about at qualifying pace for a few laps... I suspect this 'record' would return to F1..... <think>

i would agree with that John

of course it would but then F1 cars have carbon brakes and are lighter so will by default always be faster on a road course on a serious run.

We must consider that it was Toyota that set the old lap record, not Ferrari or renault who would have gone much quicker.

The fact that the F1 record was beaten I think is pretty irrelevant, I doubt Zonta would have been going flat-out in a demo run, and it is just a way to put Bourdais' time in perspective I guess...

Taking the role of the devils advocate, the record was still beaten, what ever the excuses are. It shows that the new Champ Cars are right up there in terms of speed, at a fraction of the cost!

They have a standard chassis, don't they? It's completely different to F1, presumably the regulations aren't changed every season, and so on?

they all use the same Panoz DP01 chassis

which is actually not that cheap

the proposed Gelles Racing and Polestar racing have already cancelled their orders and won't be making an appearance on the Champ Car grid in 2007

They won't spend as much as F1 teams do on chassis development then. How do Champ Car speeds compare at Montreal?

according to wikipedia...Since 1978 Formula 1 has made an annual visit to the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal. Champ Car added this circuit to their tour in 2002. During the inaugural Champ Car visit in 2002. Former Champ Car Champion Juan Pablo Montoya won the pole position in the Formula 1 race with a lap time of 1:12.836. Several weeks later, Cristiano Da Matta won the pole position in the Champ Car race with a lap time of 1:18.959.

so six seconds in 2002, course that could be affected by weather conditions etc, haven't been able to find out any data for 2003-2006.

As I said before champcars have steel brakes, are 30% heavier than F1 cars and up till this year have had sequential gearboxes not paddle shifts like F1.

its a bit of an irrelevant argument really but I suppose it does serve to illustrate the difference between F1 and champcar.

yep, it is a bit of an pointless argument

IRL also use sequential shift, none of this flappy paddle crap they use in f1


the new champ car chassis is apparently having trouble agreeing with the tyres

does anyone know how much a Panoz DP01 costs??

i know that the IRL Panoz was sold to some teams at Indy for as little as $120,000

ah! it was Stephan Gregoire that bought the cheap Panoz and ran it under the Team Leader Motorsports team

just a bit a useless knowledge there for you

Gregoire was no where near an Indy seat but he got there before Robby Mcgehee and others to buy himself a seat

It's not crap, it saves time! People can argue that F1 cars are easy to drive now, but that has happened because that makes laptimes faster. When a car is being designed, the designer does not have 'Oh, this will make the driver's time easier, best not add that'...

flappy paddle gears are crap!! all this driver aids bollox!

doesn't rub with me

get back to having a gear stick, big wimps!

Nothing to do with the drivers being wimps. Wet races remember?

*yawn*

sorry, i nearly slipped into a coma then with boredom

an f1 advert just came on the tv

*message quoted from Oily Oaf*

i love this guy!

hang on there stradlin. Just because you don't like F1 dosen't mean you need to bang on and on about it....again. A lot of people like F1 and you should have respect for those people instead of making put down comments. Its a debate not an argument remember.

You know, for someone that likes to think they are mature, you aren't acting like such a person. Quite why a reasonable thread has turned into one where you bash F1, I don't understand.

i don't like f1

but I know alot about it, because I am motorsport fan

alot of f1 fans (not motorsport fans) don't understand other series at all but still critisise them despite not knowing any facts and having poor knowledge

i'm just balancing the books

in their view, its not f1, so it must be rubbish

every thread I look at there is you bashing NASCAR or the like!

it works both ways

Not at all. You just like to think that.

Not really. I stopped doing that long ago. In that thread in the F1 section recently, I gave my view on Nascar, because it was appropriate for the thread. I was not the only one that was slightly critical of it.

and i'm not the only one critical of f1!

mr Oaf likes his racing

What, so you are going to molest him constantly because he shares your view? My god, that is sad.

just going back a bit to a post I posted a bit back



does anyone actually know how much a Panoz DP01 costs?

<icecream> this is interesting reading.... <whistle>

Molest him? erm no, i'll leave that for you to do with your f1 driver hero's!

don't worry, all will be well for you on Sunday morning when the f1 circus rolls into Melbourne

then you can watch a long line of cars drive round a track for 80 laps without overtaking anything!! that is some acheivement!

argh! ice cream!

one of the few things that causes damage to me

Stradlin your the forum host here, you have a responsibility to conduct the discussion in a reasonable way, not to insult the participants in that discussion. This thread has gone to crap since you started insulting F1.

here's one for you

Who was the first driver to test a Panoz DP01?

ok, back on topic



*points upwards*

Well if you know as much as you think you do, the race is 58 laps ;-) Stick to what the forum is meant for.

Speed TV puts the cost at $295K

http://www.speedtv.com/articles/auto/champcar/32509/

I guess that is rolling chassis minus the lump.






























And they have paddle shifters
roflmao roflmao roflmao

I think people need to calm down and count to ten.

I love all kinds of motorsport, IRL, F1, CC, ALMS, WRC, A1GP and so on. I am trying to get into NASCAR this year, but so far the races have not been that inspiring. Maybe next year when Wheldon is in the series.

But calm down please. I have never deleted a post nor locked a thread. But I will if I have to.

The Mexico Busch race was pretty good.

yeah but was it not a road race?

we don't need to delete posts in this section of the board


i think i all my days here and HPL i've only ever deleted one post

that much for the Panoz!!

no wonder DRR stuck with the IRL