Servia makes most of a chance

Oriol Servia talked to car owner Jimmy Vasser, a former champion driver, Friday morning about his frustration at not having a ride in this season’s Champ Car World Series.

Servia had been planning to be at next week’s race in Houston but was having second thoughts.

“I told Vasser, ‘Man, I’m tired. There’s nothing I hate more than walking around race weekend without a job,’ ” Servia recalled. “He was telling me, ‘Come on, maybe you should go. You never know.’

“I guess I’m going now.”

Servia might have started the weekend unemployed -- primarily because he doesn’t bring sponsor dollars with him -- but the Spaniard turned in an eye-catching performance Sunday as a replacement for 2003 series champion Paul Tracy, who’d crashed Saturday, breaking a vertebra.

Driving for owner Gerald Forsythe, Servia finished second to three-time series champion Sebastien Bourdais in the 33rd Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach.

“I guess I have good genes,” said Servia, whose father, Salvador, was a Spanish rally champion. “I’ve not always been with the best teams out there, and I’ve learned that to be the best, you have to work hard. I think that’s what makes me good.

“I knew that if I wasn’t too rusty, I could do a good job.”

Servia, who had been a full-time driver in the series since 2000, was in the pits when he got a call from Neil Micklewright, Forsythe Championship Racing’s vice president of operations, after Tracy’s accident.

“Micklewright called me and asked me if I was here and if I had a seat,” Servia recalled. “I said yeah, and he said, ‘Come over here.’ ”

He got 15 minutes of warm-up in an unfamiliar car before qualifying 14th.

Servia is so highly regarded that despite his last-minute start, Bourdais expected him to qualify 10th. Bourdais’ engineer, Craig Hampson, expected him to qualify eighth or better.

Servia’s race couldn’t have gone much better. He passed two cars before he pitted under caution on Lap 10. After the rest of the field pitted under green, Servia led for seven laps. After the second round of pit stops, he found himself behind Bourdais, whom he chased to the finish.

Servia has won only one race in his eight seasons driving a Champ Car but seems to often maximize a car’s potential. He won the 1999 Indy Lights championship, even though he didn’t win a race, and managed eight top-10 performances, including a third-place finish at Detroit, as a rookie in 2000.

He gave car owner Dale Coyne his best season in 19 years in 2004, and in 2005 he finished second in the standings to Bourdais after leaving Coyne for Newman-Haas. Teamed last season with rookie Katherine Legge at PKV Racing, co-owned by Vasser and series owner Kevin Kalkhoven, Servia finished 11th. In off-season testing, he was faster than many drivers who did get jobs.

But Servia’s lack of funding burned him. That he can’t get a full-time ride irritates Bourdais.

“It [ticks] me off,” Bourdais said. “I think if we are a professional series, we should have professional drivers. And when you hear the figures and you hear people asking drivers $3 million to get a ride, it’s not right.”

But he got a chance Sunday and made the most of it. And he will get another next week.

martin.henderson@latimes.com