Bourdais, Tower Survive “Total Rollercoaster” of LMP2 Race

Photo: Jake Galstad/IMSA

Sebastien Bourdais said the finish of last weekend’s Rolex 24 at Daytona was a “total rollercoaster” with a number of LMP2 teams dropping out from the lead.

Bourdais, in his first IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship LMP2 start, helped take Tower Motorsports to top class honors in the Florida endurance classic, teaming up with John Farano, Sebastian Alvarez and Job Van Uitert in the No. 8 Oreca 07 Gibson.

It came after no fewer than four cars in the LMP2 field fell by the wayside, with gearbox failure for the No. 88 AF Corse entry, an electrical issue for the No. 99 AO Racing Oreca, and the No. 18 Era Motorsport car getting collected by Mathias Beche’s No. 52 PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports Oreca.

Bourdais briefly slotted into the class lead before the final yellow but was passed by Beche on the restart and Paul-Loup Chatin’s Era Oreca in the pits. However, Beche’s collision with Chatin allowed the Frenchman to once again take control of the field.

“It looked like it was going to be really difficult during the day,” said Bourdais. “Finally, it came to us, mostly because of incidents and unforced errors from others.

“It’s like, ‘Maybe we got a shot. Nope, we don’t. Look, we have actually got this. Nope, we don’t.’ It was just like a total rollercoaster.

“There was a lot of carnage around us. Just a lot of really, really aggressive driving which ended up in contact. I was very surprised, to be honest.

“I don’t think I managed to pass someone without someone just hitting me, plain and simple, which I’m not a big fan of. Every time I was super happy that the car was still straight and we kept going forward because every time it was a pretty solid hit.”

Once in the class lead following Beche and Chatin’s contact, Bourdais extended his advantage in final stint, saving enough fuel to not need an extra stop in the end.

“The engineer was on the radio going, ‘You cannot go slow enough right now,'” said Bourdais. “‘We need to go behind the GTPs so we don’t do an extra lap because we don’t have the fuel for it.’ We were hitting, I think, 20 percent of fuel saving, so it was massive numbers.

“Racing in IMSA and those races sometimes comes to just very strange circumstances, and this one definitely was not a conventional one.”

Bourdais said a win in the season opener was “no better way to start” his new season-long campaign in the LMP2 class with Farano.

“Thanks to John for putting this together and thanks to my teammates who really did a great job,” he said.

“It was a solid effort. [There’s] definitely no better way to start the relationship with Tower Motorsports, and we’ll head to Sebring with our heads high and our hopes up.

“The boys did an amazing job. Rick’s team of mechanics, which is the best of the ESM group that Philippe Dumas put together. Ryan did a really, really good strategy for us.

“We definitely didn’t have the fastest car, but we kept our heads down and mostly stayed out of trouble.”

A multi-car collision on Saturday evening could have ended the Tower crew’s chances of victory when a total of seven cars were collected or took damage as a result of a chain reaction from a spinning Louis Deletraz.

“I was part of the big one, big time,” said Bourdais. “A car over my left fender, a car over my right fender and I don’t think I had time to back off because I made contact because I was on the gearbox of the Pratt Miller car and it all came to a stop.

“It was like ‘Days of Thunder.’

“Honestly, when it all cleared in front of me and the car still had four wheels on it and the steering wheel was straight, I was like, ‘Man, this is just a miracle.’

“For more than one reason we feel very, very fortunate to be sitting here because it could have been over quite a few times actually.”

John Dagys contributed to this report