Bourdais: a fan of unification, but now of how it was arranged. (LAT photo)
Sebastien Bourdais frequently was quoted as favoring a merger of the Champ Car and IndyCar series during his time in America, when the Frenchman scored four consecutive Champ Car World Series titles. Now that it has happened, however Bourdais put himself firmly in the “against” camp. Speaking to reporters in Jerez, Spain, where he was testing for his new team -- the Scuderia Toro Rosso Formula 1 team -- Bourdais described the manner in which the American open-wheel series merged as "a disaster" for Champ Car teams.
While welcomed the merger itself, he believes the late decision to unify and the reliance on IRL equipment will severely penalize the former Champ Car teams.
"We had all been waiting for it for a long time, but obviously didn't expect it 30 days before the start of a season," he declared. "It's not a merger, it's the death of Champ Car and the IRL taking over -- the schedules, cars, everything. It's the cars (the IRL teams) have been running around with for five years, so what are the Champ Car teams going to be able to do? Nothing.
"They had no time to prepare over the winter, because the winter is over. It's a disaster for Champ Car teams, obviously."
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Bourdais said his former Newman/Haas team’s trips to the Indianapolis 500 in 2004 and 2005 demonstrated how quickly the scale of the task facing the IRL newcomers. "The cars are really, really, really hard to develop. It's all tiny little things, especially on ovals," he said. "In year one Bruno (Junqueira) my teammate, not knowing the car, was on the first row. We made a few developments over the year, but obviously not much because it wasn't our car.
"We showed up the next year and were 14th/15th, 2.5-3mph off the pace. Yes, we had great race car -- we were running in the top five towards the end, I had a cut tire and I crashed on the last lap, but we were in the mix in the race.
"But in one year they had gained 3mph, so over five years you can imagine what has happened. Even if they start working on the cars now, the season's going to be over by the time they start to be half-competitive."
