The 2007 Champ Car World Series season-opening Vegas Grand Prix will unveil many new story lines and newly-renamed Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing (NHLR) plans to contribute to the list. McDonalds driver Sebastien Bourdais will attempt to earn an unprecedented fourth consecutive title but that quest could be even more difficult with the arrival of the first new racing chassis in five years as well as five new venues on the 16-race schedule.
We obviously hope it is going to be possible for the McDonalds team to capture our fourth straight championship but we definitely know it will be hard this year, said Bourdais, who has amassed a 39 percent win average over his four seasons in the series. Everyone has the same equipment and you really cant change much on the car so for a team that likes to develop the car and experiment, this is a disadvantage. There are a lot of new venues where we dont have the advantage of experience and there hasnt been much testing so we start the season with a fairly unknown car and we wont be allowed a ton of tests during the season. We can only run 600 miles, thats it. In the end, we hope that consistency will once again be our strength, and after four years in the series, I hope to be able to lean on my experience.
While testing of the all-new Panoz DP01 chassis has been limited to help contain costs and new venues in Las Vegas, China, Holland, Belgium and Phoenix should put old and new teams on equal footing due to having no previous experience on the tracks, Bourdais has a proven record of rising to the challenge. Five times in the last four seasons, Champ Car has held inaugural events and in each of those five events Bourdais has emerged the winner. The streak started at Brands Hatch (England) in 2003 and continued to Las Vegas Motor Speedway in 2004, Edmonton and San Jose in 2005 and last year in Houston, so a sixth straight victory on a new course is just what Bourdais needs to take advantage of in order to make history winning four consecutive Champ Car titles.
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