Bourdais shatters F1 record in Champ Car

With 10 minutes left in today's test session Sebastien Bourdais (pictured right on a fast lap) has shattered the lap record at the 11-turn, 2.238 mile Laguna Seca set last year in the Toyota TF106 F1 car by Ricardo Zonta.

Last August Toyota brought one of their $10 million F1 cars to Laguna Seca with a slew of factory engineers and Bridgestone sticky qualifying rubber with one goal in mind, to beat the Champ Car lap record at Laguna Seca. After trying hard Zonta turned a lap of 1m06.309s to beat the Champ Car record that stood since 2000 set by Helio Castroneves at 1m07.772s.

Today Bourdais, in his $250,000 'spec' Champ Car shattered that record by 1/2 second in his new Champ Car on hard Bridgestone tires (Bridgestone brought no softer red option tires to the test) to take back the outright lap record from F1. Bourdais set the new mark at 1m05.880s.

The new record is almost 2-seconds under the old Champ Car lap record set in the days of huge horsepower when Honda, Toyota and Ford were trying to beat each other into the ground.