Bourdais sees challenge in equity

Sebastien Bourdais has dominated the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, and the overall Champ Car World Series, in recent years. But he’s the first to say that’s unlikely to happen again this season.

As qualifying starts today for Sunday’s race on the seaside course in the streets of Long Beach, Bourdais has plenty of competition -- starting with his new teammate, 18-year-old rookie Graham Rahal.

Why? Champ Car this year introduced a new race car, the Panoz DP01, that eroded the edge held by some teams, said Bourdais, who drives for the Newman-Haas-Lanigan team.

“Everybody has the same stuff now, there’s no advantage whatsoever,” he said. “It’s definitely going to level the playing field.”

That seemed evident in the series opener Sunday in Las Vegas. Second-year driver Will Power of Team Australia won his first series race from the pole position. Rookie Robert Doornbos, a Dutch driver for Minardi Team USA, was second. Bourdais, who has won the Long Beach race the last two years and the Champ Car title for the last three, failed to finish the race. So did Rahal and another touted rookie, Power’s teammate Simon Pagenaud of France.

But Bourdais, a 28-year-old native of Le Mans, the famous French racing city, isn’t complaining. The new car and stepped-up competition provide added incentive for him to win a fourth championship.

“It’s an exciting challenge with the new car,” Bourdais said. “It’s never boring.”

He also looks forward to Long Beach’s 11-turn, 1.97-mile course.

“Great venue, big crowd, exciting racetrack and usually a pretty successful place for us,” he said.

Qualifying takes two days. The quickest driver today wins the provisional pole and is assured a spot on the two-car front row. But he or she could lose the pole if another driver posts a faster qualifying speed Saturday.

Rahal -- knocked out on the first lap of the Las Vegas race, one of six new venues on the Champ Car schedule -- knows his way around Long Beach.

Last year, while driving in Champ Car’s Atlantic development series, he finished fifth here before scoring five victories and finishing second in the points to Pagenaud.

He’s the son of Bobby Rahal, the 1986 Indianapolis 500 winner and co-owner of Rahal Letterman Racing, a team in the IndyCar Series, the nation’s other major open-wheel racing series.

The young Rahal said he chose Champ Car because he prefers its road courses and street races to the predominantly oval racing of his dad’s series.

Bourdais, however, doesn’t expect to be Rahal’s mentor.

“He’s driven a lot of cars and doesn’t seem to need any advice,” Bourdais said. “He’s not coming to me. He kind of does it his own way and it works.”

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The Long Beach grand prix will be accompanied by several support races, and practice and/or qualifying for all the events is scheduled today. They include:

* Cars in the American Le Mans series, with four classes of sports cars including LMP1 and LMP2 prototype cars, will compete at Long Beach for the first time Saturday.

The LMP2 class features cars from Honda’s Acura division, which developed the engines at Honda’s racing facility in Santa Clarita. Series drivers include Valencia’s Bryan Herta of Andretti Green Racing.

* The pro-celebrity race also will be run Saturday with drivers in identically prepared Toyota Scion tCs. Scheduled drivers include movie director George Lucas and “Cold Case” television actress Kathryn Morris.

* Champ Car’s Atlantic series races Sunday morning before the grand prix. After the grand prix, high-performance sports cars compete in the SCCA Speed Challenge GT race. There also will be team drifting races today through Sunday.

james.peltz@latimes.com