Sebastien Bourdais: Champ Car Champion, Formula One Driver and Le Mans Class Winner

Bourdais built a career that ran through open-wheel racing, Formula One, endurance racing and touring cars. He took four straight Champ Car crowns, drove 27 Formula One events, raced full-time in IndyCar and won his Le Mans class with Ford. This profile follows him from karting in Le Mans to his current sports car work.

Alongside his single-seater years he spent much of his career in endurance and touring events, with spells in North American and European series. As of January 2025 he had won 76 races in total, and he raced in the Hypercar class of the FIA World Endurance Championship for Cadillac Hertz Team Jota.

Where did Sebastien Bourdais start racing?

Bourdais began karting at the age of ten, having been born into a racing family in Le Mans. His father Patrick raced touring cars, hill climbs and sports cars. He won the Maine Bretagne League in 1991 and the Cadet France title in 1993, then stepped up to single-seaters in 1995.

The single-seater years built his reputation. He finished ninth in the Formula Campus by Renault and Elf series in 1995, then took second place in French Formula Renault in 1997 with four wins and five poles. In 1998 he won five races to become Rookie of the Year in French Formula 3, and in 1999 he took the series title with eight wins and three poles.

His Formula 3000 years followed. He joined the Prost Junior Team in 2000 and finished ninth in the series. In 2002, driving for Super Nova Racing, he took three victories and seven poles and won the title by two points over Giorgio Pantano after Tomas Enge was penalised for failing a drug test.

Four straight Champ Car crowns, then IndyCar, factory sports prototypes and a Le Mans class win for Ford.

How did he dominate Champ Car?

Bourdais joined Newman/Haas Racing for the 2003 CART season and became the first rookie since Nigel Mansell to take pole for his debut race. He went on to win four consecutive Champ Car titles from 2004 to 2007, a run that made him one of the most dominant drivers in the series.

His first season was a slow start that turned into a strong finish. The start was slow, with nothing better than eleventh until his fourth outing, when he led 95 laps on the way to his first win at Brands Hatch. He finished the year as Rookie of the Year and fourth overall, after a runner-up finish in Mexico City.

The 2004 season was his peak. Driving a McDonald's-sponsored Lola for Newman/Haas, he won seven races with eight poles and beat teammate Junqueira by 28 points. He finished on the podium at ten of fourteen events that year, and he won the title again in 2005 with five wins in six races late in the season. In May 2005 he finished twelfth on his first Indianapolis 500 start.

The 2006 title fight was tougher. Bourdais won four straight races at Long Beach, Houston, Monterrey and Milwaukee, but A.J. Allmendinger then won three in a row through the middle of the season. A win at Montreal lifted Bourdais to a 62-point lead with three races left, and he clinched the championship at Surfers Paradise. The last driver to win three straight titles before him was Ted Horn in 1948, and his fourth title came in 2007 with victory at the Lexmark Indy 300 on 21 October.

What happened in his Formula One years?

Bourdais raced 27 Formula One events for Toro Rosso across 2008 and the start of 2009. He scored points at the Australian and Monaco grands prix in 2009 but was regularly outpaced by his less experienced team-mate, Sebastien Buemi, and was dropped in July 2009.

His debut at the 2008 Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne was promising. He qualified 17th and climbed to fourth before an engine problem forced him out three laps from the end. He was classified eighth and later inherited seventh, and with it two points, after Rubens Barrichello was disqualified.

His best weekend came at the 2008 Belgian Grand Prix. He qualified ninth, ran as high as third and was in contention for the podium until the rain intensified. Cars on wet tyres passed him on the final lap, and he finished seventh, his first points since Melbourne.

At the Italian Grand Prix he qualified fourth, but the car would not select first gear on the grid, so he started from the pit lane. He finished a lap down behind team-mate Sebastian Vettel and set the second-fastest lap of the race, bettered only by one other car.

Japan was less kind. He was sixth on the road before a 25-second penalty for an avoidable accident with Felipe Massa dropped him to tenth. Many observers disagreed with the call, and the FIA later released stewards-only footage to justify it.

Toro Rosso confirmed him for a second season on 6 February 2009. Points finishes in Australia and Monaco were offset by collisions at the Spanish Grand Prix and the British Grand Prix, where he tangled with Heikki Kovalainen, plus a mechanical failure in Germany. On 16 July 2009 the team announced he would be replaced from the Hungarian Grand Prix. Toro Rosso settled a potential breach of contract claim with a 2.1 million dollar payment.

How did he perform at Le Mans?

Bourdais first entered the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1999, aged twenty, and retired after 134 laps. He finished fourth in 2000, and he was runner-up in 2007 and 2009 in factory Peugeots. He won the GTE-Pro class in 2016 with Ford Performance.

The early attempts were mixed. In 2001 his Courage C60 retired after 271 laps, and in 2004 another car he shared stopped after 282 laps. He did finish ninth in the LMP900 class with the same model in 2002.

The 2007 race with Peugeot Sport was a strong effort. Bourdais slid on the first lap in wet conditions and lost a place to one of the Audis, and car problems later forced him to park for the closing minutes while the leading Audi crossed the line.

He was a Peugeot Sport factory driver from 2007 to 2011. In 2010 the pole-winning No. 3 Peugeot suffered a suspension failure that halted co-driver Pedro Lamy before Bourdais could turn a lap. Across those years he was runner-up at Le Mans three times.

His Ford Performance years ran from 2016 to 2019 and ended on a high with the GTE-Pro class victory in 2016. He became a Cadillac factory driver in 2022.

How did his IndyCar career unfold?

Bourdais made his IRL debut at the 2005 Indianapolis 500 and raced full-time in the unified IndyCar Series from 2011 to 2021. Wins at Belle Isle and Milwaukee in 2015 and at St Petersburg in 2017 and 2018 marked his best years, while a qualifying crash at Indianapolis in May 2017 cost him most of that season.

The 2014 season brought two poles, one victory and a tenth-place championship finish. His Toronto heat race win that year made him the third driver to win open-wheel championship races under three North American sanctioning bodies, alongside Al Unser Jr and Ryan Hunter-Reay. His 2015 Belle Isle win was his 33rd American open-wheel victory.

After the 2017 crash he returned at Gateway for the final three races of the season. In 2018 he won at St Petersburg after a late restart and took pole at Phoenix, adding to a run that also included a victory at Milwaukee in 2015.

In 2020 he drove part-time for A.J. Foyt Racing and finished fourth in the rescheduled St Petersburg finale. He was then confirmed as a full-time driver for 2021, and at Long Beach that season he announced it would be his last full-time IndyCar year. He left the door open to selected races, including the Indianapolis 500.

Sports cars, touring cars and other series

Bourdais has raced sports cars throughout his career. He won the Spa 24 Hours in 2002 in a Larbre Chrysler Viper GTS-R, and he won his class at the 12 Hours of Sebring in 2006 in a Panoz Esperante. He set the official lap record at Sebring International Raceway during the 2009 race.

In 2014 he won the Rolex 24 at Daytona for Action Express in a Corvette DP. In 2015 he finished second at 24 Hours of Daytona before winning the 12 Hours of Sebring with the same team.

Outside sports cars he drove V8 Supercars at the Gold Coast 600. Teaming with Jamie Whincup, he won the Dan Wheldon Memorial Trophy in 2011 and again in 2012, the award for the international driver who scored the most points over the weekend. In July 2012 he also won the inaugural Brickyard Grand Prix sports car race at Indianapolis.

He has started the Bathurst 1000 once, finishing ninth with Lee Holdsworth in 2015. From 2022 he focused on his Cadillac duties, first with Chip Ganassi Racing in IMSA and then, from 2024, with Cadillac Hertz Team Jota.

Career summary

Across his career he has won 37 races in American open-wheel racing, and as of January 2025 he had 76 race wins in total.