Champ Car teams wrap up testing at Road America

Elkhart Lake – Testing finished up at Elkhart Lake’s Road America today with Sebastien Bourdais (#1 McDonald’s Cosworth/DP01/Bridgestone) fastest on the track. The three time series champion flew straight from the podium at the 24 Hours of Le Mans to the top of the time sheets at Road America on the final day of testing.

Bourdais lapped the 4.048-mile track in 1m42.60 seconds nearly half a second quicker than his teammate Graham Rahal (#2 Medi|Zone Cosworth/DP01/Bridgestone) who was second fastest at 1m43.00 seconds.

“I’ve been awake for 24 hours after racing a 24 hour race so I’m a little tired," said the Frenchman Bourdais. “Today was just okay, we didn’t get all the laps in we wanted to, so we still have some miles to test with later. We went through the main things we wanted and the baseline setup on the car was good. We made a small change and put up a pretty quick lap right before the break. In the afternoon the conditions changed so we weren’t able to improve much, but I think we learned some things."

After a disappointing day on Monday, Oriol Servia (#7 Indeck Cosworth/DP01/Bridgestone) rebounded to set the third quickest time with a lap at 1m43.43 seconds. His teammate 2003 series champion Paul Tracy (#3 Indeck Cosworth/DP01/Bridgestone) clocked a best time of 1m43.90 seconds.

Fourth fastest was RSPORTS’ Justin Wilson (#9 CDW Cosworth/DP01/Bridgestone) who also struggled a bit on Monday after earning his first podium finish of the year at Portland.

“We had some momentum from Portland, but it was hard work here." said Wilson. “The CDW car feels good and is working well but we still have work to do. I messed up a little on my fastest lap so we know there is some more speed in the car but we still need to work to find more because Sebastien is comfortably ahead. We found something late today that gave us another second so we just need to keep working. We’ll see what Cleveland brings us. I imagine the DP01 will be fun there, because they are pretty quick here."

PKV Racing’s Neel Jani (#21 Red Bull/Gulfstream Cosworth/DP01/Bridgestone) was fifth fastest on the day before he made contact with the wall in Turn 12. Jani was unhurt and did only minor damage to his Red Bull machine.

The Champ Car teams are now headed to Cleveland’s Burke Lakefront Airport for the Champ Car Grand Prix of Cleveland Presented by LaSalle Bank. Round 5 gets underway on Friday, June 22 with the race on Sunday, June 24 live on CBS Sports at 1:00 pm ET.

June 19 Lap Times at Road America
1. Sebastien Bourdais 1m42.60 seconds
2. Graham Rahal 1m43.00
3. Oriol Servia 1m43.43
4. Justin Wilson 1m43.54
5. Neel Jani 1m43.59
6. Bruno Junqueira 1m43.70
7. Alex Figge 1m43.70
8. Alex Tagliani 1m43.74
9. Paul Tracy 1m43.90
10. Katherine Legge 1m44.04
11. Jan Heylen 1m44.07
12. Ryan Dalziel 1m44.43