Sebastien Bourdais is one of many racers who celebrated a birthday this week. In honor of Bourdais' birthday, here's his first Indy car win from 2003.
For this week's Classic Rewind, we wanted to honor one of the drivers celebrating a birthday this week by showing you one of their wins. But it turns out, we don't have the TV footage of Mario Andretti's first win. So we struck out there.
The we remembered it was Sebastien Bourdais' birthday as well. So we've fired up the Wayback Machine and headed to the Frenchman's rookie season of 2003. Bourdais scored his first pole in his first race at St. Petersburg, but though he showed speed, he hadn't finished in the top 10 of any race. That all changed when Champ Car headed across the pond to race at Brands Hatch.
The famed circuit's "Indy" layout hosted the London Champ Car Trophy as the fourth round of the 2003 season. Because of its short length, Champ Car opted for single-car qualifying and Paul Tracy scored the pole with Bourdais alongside.
The Canadian led the first 54 laps until his pit stop handed the lead to Bourdais, who would lead the next 62 laps before he surrended the lead to Alex Tagliani. When Tagliani pitted for his final stop, Bourdais regained the lead and headed off the first of his 35 Indy car wins.