IT'S A DRY HEAT; Bourdais catches hell in the desert and all but locks up the title.(Motorsports)(Las Vegas Motor Speedway)(Sebastien Bourdais)

Byline: J.P. VETTRAINO

Whatever happened, give Sebastien Bourdais credit for not taking the easy route to the championship. At Las Vegas Motor Speedway, a safe top-five finish would have gone a long way toward cementing his commanding lead in the Champ Car points. Instead, Bourdais kept himself glued to Paul Tracy's gearbox for most of the race, fighting hammer and tongs to seize the lead.

The effort paid Bourdais with another win-his fifth this season and the 15th of his 43-race Champ Car career-but not before he wrecked Tracy and started a controversy that will rage long after the season ends. The two had been running a few feet apart for 100 laps when Tracy checked up and Bourdais bumped his right-rear tire. Tracy looped and slammed the outside wall with the force of a falling anvil, and accusatory fingers pointed at Bourdais from every corner. Besides the race win, Bourdais can be consoled by the fact that series officials ultimately sided with him.

"I had no time to brake before I hit him,'' he said. "I was on his gearbox when he decided to slow down. It's a miracle it wasn't worse. I mean, we're doing 200 mph, and I have absolutely nothing to win by bumping into him like that.''

The Champ Car circus rolled into Vegas after a four-week break for its only superspeedway race this year. In qualifying, it was all car. Veteran Jimmy Vasser, who started third, called the drivers "spacers used to hold the gas pedal down.'' They ran the same high-downforce aero package that Champ Car had used for its debut at LVMS last season, and if speeds were a few miles per hour slower, it probably came down to the tire compound. The fastest cars were those best trimmed out to limit drag. It was no surprise that the Newman-Haas Lolas qualified first and second, with Bourdais (204.693 mph) edging teammate Oriol Servia by 0.007 second.

Tracy started 14th, suffering through his worst qualifying run since 2003, but his Forsythe Racing team sure found something overnight. During the first green-flag lap Saturday evening, Tracy made up 10 spots. After six laps he was running second, and during the seventh he squeezed past Bourdais and into the lead.

Not long after, the piece of bodywork covering the front shocks on Bourdais' car blew off-not great on a track where proper aerodynamics are so crucial to speed. Nonetheless, through the first two pit stops, Bourdais clung to Tracy, and on a couple of occasions nosed his Lola ahead of Tracy's to lead a lap. Servia hovered a few car-lengths back of the first two, looking a bit like a vulture.