The race restarted and Bourdais maintained over a one second lead over Servia and bettered his fastest lap on Lap 67 before his final pit stop on Lap 68. Luckily Bourdais entered the pits immediately before a caution flag closed the pits for two separate incidents involving five cars. He returned to the track behind rookie Tristan Gommendy who had made his previous pit stop on Lap 48, 20 laps before Bourdais made his second one. By the time the race resumed, Bourdais was informed that Gommendy could possibly complete the race without another fuel stop if the caution flag came out again. He closed to 0.4-seconds of Gommendy multiple times in the ensuing laps but didn’t attempt a pass. On Lap 86 of what would be 93 Gommendy immediately slowed on course and Bourdais grazed his car with his front wing. After his pulse returned to normal he settled in to the lead and turned the fastest race lap the final two laps of the event and led his teammate Graham Rahal to the checkered flag for the team’s first one-two finish since Bourdais and Oriol Servia accomplished the feat in Las Vegas in the fall of 2005. He earned 31 points for the win and one for setting the fastest race lap. Previous points leader Will Power finished 11th and Bourdais was able to take over the lead with a total of 73 points to Power’s 70 after Round 3 of 16. Following are his post race comments:
“It’s just been a weird weekend overall, ” said Bourdais. “You know, it feels really good to be back at the top here. After a great weekend at Long Beach, you know, and now having the first 1-2 with Graham, it has been a long time for Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing. It feels really good because the boys worked so hard last night. Like Graham was saying, it’s been a long winter, they really worked their tails off. It’s paying off. It’s all to their credit. I couldn’t be any happier. It was a pretty tough beginning of the race. And then Justin made it a bit easier for us. He got around Will. So I just had to give up that position. And then after that, we were saving fuel, saving fuel, saving fuel. And I kind of had the feeling that Justin might have been struggling a little bit to make the fuel mileage, so I just kept the pressure. And I think at some point he really, really tried to make the target, and he just, you know, couldn’t keep the pace. I got a good jump out of turn 10, and got around. After that, it was a straighter shot but a pretty eventful race. I have to say it wasn’t easy. We got I think quite a few things to look at the car because towards the end, it wasn’t the same car as the beginning. So I’m just glad it turned out all right. You know, I’m very happy for all the McDonald’s crew. ”
| 
|