BOURDAIS IN THE DTM
“IT WAS, ‘SORRY BUD, BUT YOU’RE GOING TO END UP IN CARS WITH ROOFS AND DOORS’”
Sebastien Bourdais and Newman-haas Racing were an unstoppable force in Indycar racing prior to the Frenchman joining Toro Rosso in Formula 1 for 2008. After impressing in his 2003 Champ Car rookie season with a debut pole and three wins, he romped to four consecutive titles between 2004 and 2007, amassing a further 28 victories on the way.
But in a parallel reality, Bourdais could have spent 2003 in the DTM fighting a losing battle for competitiveness with Opel.
Bourdais had claimed the 2002 Formula 3000 championship for the Super Nova team owned by his manager, David Sears, but that mattered little when it came to securing an F1 berth for 2003. True, he had support from Renault in 2002, but relations between Bourdais and the French car maker’s F1 boss Flavio Briatore were frosty after the young gun had turned down a management contract that he says provided no assurances about any future race seat. His best chance therefore lay with Arrows. He had impressed in a two-day test at Valencia, but the team’s collapse left the door to F1 firmly closed.
“I knew I wasn’t going to have an opportunity at Renault, so when Arrows fell through we didn’t have any other options,” explains Bourdais, today part of Cadillac’s IMSA GTP operation.“it was,‘sorry bud, but you’re going to end up in cars with roofs and doors’. I was still going to make a living out of it, but my F1 aspirations at that point were gone. So I had to go with Volker Strycek in the Opel DTM programme. I had a test there, they really liked me and they signed me.”
But Sears had crucially negotiated a clause in the contract that would allow Bourdais to exit the deal in the event of interest from an F1 or Indycar team. Sears also managed 2002 CART runner-up Bruno Junqueira, and brokered his move from Chip Ganassi Racing to NHR when both its incumbent drivers headed for the exit – champion Cristiano da Matta for F1 with Toyota and veteran Christian Fittipaldi in an ill-fated switch to NASCAR.
When Justin Wilson elected to focus on securing an F1 seat with Minardi and pulled out of a test for the seat alongside Junqueira, Sears recommended Bourdais. The result was an offer of a drive that got him out of Opel, even if it did mean a significant pay cut.“david did really good for me and that allowed me to take the Newman/haas opportunity,”he says. “Funnily enough, I had a €250,000 deal with Opel and then I turned it down to go and drive for Carl and Paul for $70,000!”
You’d say it was probably worth it…