Sébastien Bourdais: “Difficult to have a very well-tuned car in Barber”

Winner at the season opener in St Petersburg (Florida), then second in the streets of Long Beach in California, Sébastien Bourdais made an almost perfect start to the 2017 championship in IndyCar Series for his return under the Dale Coyne Racing banner, after his period with KVSH Racing.

Le Manceau will return to Barber Motorsports Park this weekend for the third round of the season, a track where tests had been carried out earlier in the year, and which had not necessarily gone well for Dale Coyne Racing.

« We had a bit of a complicated test and we weren't very happy with the car that we had and we tried something that didn't really work, recognizes Bourdais.

We carried out a very good test in Sonoma which was also a little bit focused on concepts that we wanted to try for Barber so we will see if our experiments which proved quite successful in Sonoma will produce results in Barber. We're a little waiting, hoping to see if it will work. »

The Dale Coyne Racing driver is banking on the precise definition of the settings of his car powered by the Honda block, on a track where getting closer to the perfect car remains a delicate exercise, on a particular track.

“There are long turns with fairly heavy loads so physically it’s not easy,” comments Bourdais. I would say that technically it is not necessarily the most difficult circuit but it's difficult to have a very, very well tuned car.

These are very long corners, I would say it's a bit like an oval where the quality of the car makes the difference in terms of the time sheet.

You really need to have a well-balanced car that allows you to bring a lot of speed and keep it throughout the entire corner and have a good exit. To set lap times, you just need the car to do what you ask it to do. »

No specific objectives

Sébastien Bourdais wants to approach the Barber event without additional pressure due to his status as leader of the general classification. On a track he likes, the winner of the 24 Hours of Le Mans 2016 in GTE Pro with Ford wants above all to progress.

“After the first two races, it's difficult to be too demanding because we still had weekends where at several times we thought we had missed a result and at the end of the day, we came out with big points and two podiums. We'll see how it goes. We're going to try to continue to have fun and see what that brings us. »