Sebastien Bourdais, above and right, races around a go-kart track at the City Centre Airport yesterday. The reigning Champ Car title holder was here as part of a promotion for the July 21-23 Edmonton Grand Prix.

Photos by David Bloom, Sun Media

The old argument: Is it the driver or the car?

Jacques Villeneuve heard it after winning the Formula One driver's title in 1997.

Sebastien Bourdais has heard the question, too.

Driving for Newman/Haas Racing, the Powerhouse team in Champ Car World Series, the smooth-driving Frenchman clinched his second consecutive title last year, which included a win here at the inaugural Grand Prix of Edmonton.

So why wouldn't Newman/Haas just send its cars out to victory lane via remote control?

"It's very much a combination between the driver and his crew," Bourdais said at the City Centre Airport yesterday, doing a promotional visit at the site of next month's Grand Prix. "Some combinations work, some don't. And you can only know once you've experienced it.

"The truth is I have a pretty good team on my side, but still I've been able to win. We've been doing a good job with my team, but the driver needs to deliver at some point."

The Newman/Haas-Bourdais combination has continued its express delivery into this season, winning the first four races before finishing third in Portland, Oregon, on Sunday.

"It works on very, very small details, too," Bourdais added. "Because everybody's got the same equipment - same engine, same chassis - so it's just fine-tuning and hard work."

"We never give up. The speed is there, the car is good, and
kerning1the driver goes at it. That's what I do. It's controlled aggression. |we take some risks. But calculated risks. And most kerning1of the time it works. It doesn't always work!

"But, it's racing. You can't control everything. We try to optimize (our situation)."

The last two races offer evidence of how tenuous the top position can be in motorsports. A miscalculation led to a pitstop for gas and put Bourdais behind A.J. Allmendinger. The American went on to a storybook finish - his first Champ Car victory in his first race for Forsythe after getting dumped by RuSport for not winning.

The race before was at the Milwaukee Mile, Champ Car's only oval race this season, and the recent chink in the Newman/Haas armour- as well as a place where the raised-on-road-courses Bourdais hadn't won.

"You're a road-racer and you've never done ovals, you can't know," Bourdais said. "The first time I tested the car (on an oval in Phoenix - my God! I was like, 'What the hell am I doing here?'

"I was speechless when I got out of the car. I was dizzy and (thinking) 'This thing is stupid, it's crazy!' I hated it."

Bourdais has won in Champ Car on superspeedway ovals in Germany and Las Vegas, but a tricky one-miler like Milwaukee is a different animal.

"When you start to understand how it works, and control a little bit more what you do, then it starts to be interesting," Bourdais said. "Newman/ Haas as an entity had been struggling on short ovals for quite a while. After some inputs from (teammate) Bruno (Junqueira), from Oriol (Servia, who filled in during Junqueira's injury last season), from myself, we were able to turn things around. Without knowing what a good short-oval car should feel like, to bringing this to the level of winning, that was very special for everybody at Newman/Haas and for myself."

Also - and let's ask the Oilers next year - once you're on top, it's not that easy to stay there. You're the target.

"I'm not sure I like to be the guy they are going after," Bourdais said, smiling. "But the sweet thing about that, it means you are in good shape, you are wining races and winning championships.