Sebastien Bourdais is now a key part of Cadillac Racing’s Hypercar and GTP efforts in the FIA WEC and IMSA’s WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
He formed part of a three-man crew together with Earl Bamber and Alex Lynn for the WEC’s Qatar season-opener but reverts to his full-season IMSA seat with Renger van der Zande for this weekend’s Long Beach Grand Prix after a podium finish last time out at Sebring.
He does though have a part to play in helping the Cadillac team prepare for the very different challenges posed by the FIA WEC’s first-ever visit to Imola.
That’s because he has winning form at the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari, albeit from 13 years ago and in a very different car!
As the FIA WEC was in preparation for 2012, the ACO organised the second and final session of the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup, and the calendar included a 6 hour race at Imola on 3 July.
Bourdais and Anthony Davidson combined to take the win for Peugeot in the #7 Peugeot 908, Bourdais coming home more than a minute ahead of the #8 sister car after current WEC TV commentator Davidson had earned the pole and Bourdais set the LMP1 race lap record of 1 minute, 33.112 seconds.
“It was a great weekend and a great year,” he said.
“The Peugeot was strong from the first free practice and Anthony gave us a good start to the race. The car was perfect and the team strategy was flawless.
“Imola is a super busy track; very restless, challenging, a lot of kerb striking, very difficult to manage traffic because it’s constantly moving across the racetrack. And the chicanes, in general, are difficult to manage traffic. Super demanding on brakes and they’ll be talking about it quite a bit during the race. I know it bit Audi quite badly and we were really on the edge with the Peugeot back then.
“It will be a challenging weekend between the car count and the track characteristics, but a fun place, especially in qualifying when you have to go for it. It’s a very rewarding track when you manage to get everything together. I’m looking forward to watching and supporting the Cadillac team.”
The Imola win saw the start of a streak of good results for Bourdais – in the next race at Silverstone, Bourdais and fellow Frenchman Simon Pagenaud started from the pole and won the six-hour race.
Bourdais and Davidson again combined to start from pole and win the season finale at Zhuhai, China securing the ILMC Team Cup championship for Peugeot Total Sport, ending 2011 on a high before the team’s shock withdrawal on the eve of the inaugural FIA WEC season in 2012.
