REMEMBER WHEN

GOLD COAST BULLETIN Monday October 24, 2005

SUPER smooth Frenchman Sebastien Bourdais needed only one point from the Lexmark Indy 300 to retain the Vanderbilt Trophy for his Newman Haas champ car racing team.

But after playing second fiddle to Canadian Paul Tracy for almost half the race, Bourdais was unchallenged for the remainder, winning by 11 seconds, earning 31 points and wrapping up the championship with the final round in Mexico still to be run on November 5, 2005.

The Surfers race maintained its record of producing a different winner for each of its 15 years, although for 24 of the 57 laps Tracy appeared to have the Frenchman’s measure, maintaining a lead of 1.5 to two seconds.

They had escaped the first lap mayhem where Brazilian Cristiano da Matta tagged the rear of pole-sitter Oriol Servia’s No. 2 Newman Haas team car.

The big loser was Mexican Mario Dominguez, winner in the wet in 1992, who had surprisingly out-qualified his Forsythe team leader Tracy.

Dominguez was taken out of the race when his car was damaged by da Matta’s PKV Racing machine which rebounded off the wall and into Dominguez’s path.

Although tagged from behind by da Matta, Servia’s car appeared undamaged.

Once restarted at the end of a tow rope, Servia radioed his team to say that the car appeared okay. It meant he could stay out on the track in the lead lap, once the field came off the yellow flag on lap three.

But instead of starting with the leaders, Servia rejoined at the tail.