NOTHING (AND EVERYTHING) to Prove; Sebastien Bourdais wins again, as Champ Car still faces questions.(News)

Byline: STEVEN COLE SMITH

For many, Sebastien Bourdais' astounding Champ Car World Series statistics always will be accompanied by an unwritten asterisk: He dominated the series, but he did it against a diminished field. Had CART and the Indy Racing League not split, the argument goes, Bourdais would not have won four straight championships and 31 races in just 73 starts and led 2103 laps of a possible 6905.

There's no argument that Bourdais ran over the competition again this year, with eight wins in 14 races. He heads to Formula One in 2008, where he will drive for Scuderia Toro Rosso.

With just one win, RuSport's Justin Wilson was second in the standings, finishing strong despite the knowledge that RuSport would fold at season's end and he'd be looking for a ride. Third was Minardi's Robert Doornbos, the ex-F1 driver who took rookie-of-the-year honors and two wins. Fourth was Team Australia's Will Power, whose two wins do not suggest just how strong his team was at times.

The year was bizarre, on and off the track. The heralded season opener in Las Vegas, proclaimed a success by almost everyone involved, has been scratched after promoter trouble. The season-ending street race in Phoenix (promoted by the same people as Las Vegas) was canceled. So was China. The last U.S. Champ Car race of the 2007 season was at Road America in August, so for many-certainly for the mainstream media-that was, effectively, the end of the season. It will be the same thing for 2008, when Road America runs on Aug. 10, though Champ Car keeps racing until the Mexico City finale three months later.

Near the end of this season, the trial of several former executives of the California high-tech company JDS Uniphase-sued by investors after company stock plummeted-hung over the series. The suit targeted series co-owner Kevin Kalkhoven as a defendant and sought millions of dollars in ...