“We took his shoelaces away so he couldn’t hang himself,” said Dale Coyne, owner of Bourdais’ No. 18 Honda.
Bourdais wasn’t quite that upset, but after crashing during his first lap of qualifying and knowing that he would have to start Sunday’s season-opening Verizon IndyCar Series race on the streets of St. Petersburg at the back of the pack, well, he was miserable.
Of course, he had no inkling that he was less than 24 hours away from pulling off one of the toughest feats in all of racing: going from last to first and winning the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg.
In fact, after Saturday’s crash, Bourdais’ ambitions for Sunday’s race in his adopted hometown went from vying for a win to simply trying to salvage a lost weekend.
Well, that’s what Bourdais thought. Coyne, both team owner and chief race strategist, didn’t feel that way.
“We were all disappointed” after qualifying, Coyne said. “But we sat there (thinking), we still got a 30 percent chance to win this race because we can go on alternate strategy. The chance of catching a lucky yellow is about 30 percent — we caught it right away.”
