Bourdais thrilled about return
ST. PETERSBURG, FLA. Sebastien Bourdais strode down the dozen or so steps to the landing and placed a stack of low-dollar health insurance reimbursement checks on the stand. His phone relinquished a notification as he slid on his shoes.
“Dale just texted me,” he said with a smile.
The prospect of an early-afternoon lunch Tuesday suddenly was spiced with what the 38year-old Verizon IndyCar Series driver’s owner wanted to speak about. Bourdais had his hopes of what would come of his conversation with Dale Coyne.
Medically cleared Aug. 15 to resume racing after breaking a hip, his pelvis and ribs in a May 20 crash during qualifying for the Indianapolis 500, Bourdais was healthy and eager to return immediately. But there was the matter of Esteban Gutierrez, the 26-year-old former Formula One driver the team had signed to replace Bourdais — a four-time champion of the now-defunct Champ Car World Series — for the last seven races.
Bourdais’ last three months have been a trial of patience. Bones had to heal. Coyne had to decide his tack after initially believing — despite Bourdais’ insistence — that his lead driver was waylaid for the season. Bourdais could return for the final race of the season on Sept. 17 at Sonoma Raceway. He’d prefer Sept. 3 at Watkins Glen International. But what he really wanted was Saturday at Gateway Motorsports Park (NBC Sports Network, 9 p.m.
ET).
That’s what Bourdais got, as Coyne announced Wednesday that Bourdais would return to the No. 18 Honda for IndyCar’s first race at the oval outside of St. Louis.
For Bourdais, it was the ultimate outcome. Because from the first hours after he awoke from surgery in Indiana University Health Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis to when a therapist began his first rudimentary rehabilitation sessions 12 hours after surgery, the Frenchman has been counting the seconds until his return. It was a return he very much wanted this year.
“The main reason I want to come back this year is because I just don’t want to talk about it next year,” Bourdais told USA TODAY Sports. “I just want it to be a distant story next year and focus forward, because if I wasn’t getting back in the car this year, the only thing people were going to talk about over the winter was that and how I was going to feel when I come back, and I don’t want that.
“That’s really on top of the fact I just want to do my job and get back in the car. That’s what I like doing. I just don’t want to have to go through a winter of trepidations and just wondering what’s going to happen and people questioning. I want to get back in the saddle and show nothing has changed, I’m the same guy, and get on with it.”
Bourdais said there was no thought — and therefore no discussion — of whether his heralded career was over. He certainly has nothing to prove, not after winning 36 races in the unified annals of the Champ Car and IndyCar series. He is ranked second among active drivers and sixth all time. And not after winning four consecutive championships with Newman-Haas Racing from 2004 to 2007 before attempting a Formula One career.
Having raced for the apex team in Champ Car, Bourdais has toiled for midpack organizations since his return to North American open-wheel racing but has won five times since the series unified upon Champ Car’s collapse in 2007.
With Coyne investing more resources in the team this offseason, Bourdais was reunited with race engineer Olivier Boisson and engineer Craig Hampson, with whom he won 31 races at Newman-Haas. He began this season with a win in the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, marking Coyne’s first victory since 2014 and fifth in 33 years as an owner.
Bourdais believes he has sever- al viable IndyCar and sports car seasons ahead — he helped Chip Ganassi Racing win the GTE Pro Class at Le Mans in 2016 — so the injury was an inconvenience, not an off ramp.
“No, never crossed my mind,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking about it when I arrived at the hospital. I arrived, and when I was fixed, ‘OK, here’s the time frame. We deal with it. It’s going to be a bit long, but ultimately there’s nothing that’s going to put an end to it.’ ”
Bourdais originally moved to St. Petersburg in 2005 and has a home on a cove in a quaint neighborhood just minutes from where IndyCar races on the downtown streets. Vestiges of children, Emma, 10, and Alex, 7, dot a living room where Oscar, the cat, greets visitors. A decidedly middle-class Honda mini-SUV is parked in the garage, and a stack of baseball cards rests on the living room table. There’s a boat and a kayak for play on the bayou and a road bike for numerous jaunts around the neighborhood.
There would be temptations for Claire Bourdais to ask her husband not to risk having a car ride him into a wall at Indianapolis Motor Speedway at 227 mph, registering a 108 G impact.
But she said she never considered broaching the topic.
“I couldn’t ask him to quit. I just can’t,” she told USA TODAY Sports. “Because first of all, he was already racing when we met, so I kind of knew what I was getting myself into, even though he wasn’t doing ovals. And also, because if I ask him now and he does stop racing, I think he’s going to resent me for it, because he still wants to do it. And if I ask him and he doesn’t, then I’ll resent him for continuing his career before his family. So I think I just have to suck up for a few more years. ... Just hope nothing bad happens ever again.”
Claire Bourdais said she was expecting “a very cranky husband” when he returned from Indianapolis and initially was ensconced in their first-floor quarters to avoid stairs.
“I have to say, he was patient,” she said. “He did not get too frustrated or mad or ...
“Well, it was self-inflicted,” Bourdais interjected, laughing.
“Yeah, you did that to yourself ... but still,” she returned.
There was apprehension even though his intentions always were set.
“Everything went to course, pretty much,” Bourdais said. “I knew it was going to be six weeks, and I told her, and obviously still not being able to put the foot down and put any weight on it properly, that’s when it was tough, because you feel like you’re just sitting still and waiting and waiting and waiting, and you just feel like you’re making no progress because you can’t make any progress. That was the tough part, the last two weeks before weight bearing.”
That moment came 6½ weeks after the injury, when Bourdais was cleared to walk by his physician in St. Petersburg.
“Instantly, I let go of the crutches, and it was like, ‘ Hey, it feels all right. Let’s go,’ ” Bourdais said with a grin.
“We shut the door of the office, and he started walking,” Claire Bourdais recalled. “I was like, ‘Are you sure?’ ”
Very sure. Had been the whole time. Now the waiting ends.