Sébastien Olivier Bourdais (French pronunciation: [sebastjɛ̃ ɔlivje buʁdɛ]; born 28 February 1979) is a French professional racing driver who currently races in the FIA World Endurance Championship for Cadillac Hertz Team Jota in the Hypercar category. He is one of the most successful drivers in the history of American open-wheel car racing, having won 37 races. He won four successive championships in the Champ Car World Series from 2004 to 2007. Later he competed at the IndyCar Series from 2011 to 2021. He also entered 27 races in Formula One for the Toro Rosso team during 2008 and the start of 2009.
Bourdais has raced sports cars throughout his career, with spells at the Rolex Sports Car Series, American Le Mans Series, Le Mans Series, Intercontinental Le Mans Cup, FIA World Endurance Championship. He was a Peugeot Sport factory driver from 2007 to 2011, finishing runner-up three times at his home race, the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The Frenchman was a Ford Performance factory driver from 2016 to 2019, winning the GTE-Pro class at the 2016 24 Hours of Le Mans. He became a Cadillac factory driver in 2022. As of January 2025, he has won 76 races in total.
Born into a racing family in Le Mans (his father Patrick raced in touring cars, hill climbs and sports cars), Bourdais began his racing career at the age of ten in karts. During the early 1990s, he competed in a variety of karting championships, winning the Maine Bretagne League in 1991 and the Cadet France championship in 1993. Bourdais was part of the winning Sologne Karting team which won the 1996 24-hour Le Mans kart race at the Circuit Alain Prost on a Merlin chassis with Atomic motors.
Bourdais progressed to single-seater racing in 1995, finishing ninth in the Formula Campus by Renault and Elf Championship. He then spent two years in the French Formula Renault Championship, ultimately finishing second in points in 1997 after winning four races and five pole positions. In 1998, he won five races to become Rookie of the Year (sixth overall) in French F3. He won the series outright in 1999, with eight wins and three poles.
Following his success in the lower formulae, Bourdais joined the Prost Junior Team in the International F3000 Championship. He finished ninth in the series with one pole and a best finish of second. In 2001, Bourdais moved to the DAMS team in Formula 3000 and took his first win in the series at Silverstone. He changed teams again for 2002, taking his Super Nova Racing car to three victories and seven pole positions. He beat Giorgio Pantano to the championship by two points after Tomáš Enge, who had scored the most points, was penalised for failing a drug test.
After his Formula 3000 career and with no prospects for graduation to Formula 1, Bourdais signed with Opel to race in the DTM in 2003. His manager, David Sears, inserted a clause in his contract which allowed him to break his contract without penalties (conditional mutual rescission) in the event that he managed to secure a drive in Formula 1, CART or the Indy Racing League. Bourdais tested for Opel but did not drive in a DTM race because he managed to secure a drive in CART for 2003. Bourdais was to be paid €250,000 for his 2003 season with Opel.
Following in the footsteps of recent F3000 graduates such as Juan Pablo Montoya and Bruno Junqueira, Bourdais moved to Champ Car racing in the United States and joined Newman/Haas Racing for the 2003 CART season. At St. Petersburg, Florida, Bourdais became the first rookie since Nigel Mansell to claim pole position for his very first race. However, he did not finish higher than eleventh until his fourth race, when he led 95 laps en route to his first Champ Car victory at Brands Hatch.
Bourdais followed this up with another victory at the Lausitzring. By the end of the season, he had earned five more podium finishes, including a win from the pole at Cleveland. With a runner-up finish in Mexico City, he clinched the Rookie of the Year title and finished fourth in the overall standings.
Bourdais was paid US $70,000 to drive for Newman/Haas Racing in 2003.
Staying with Newman-Haas for 2004, Bourdais dominated the Champ Car series with seven wins and eight poles in his McDonald's-sponsored Lola, beating his teammate Junqueira by 28 points. His record also included podium finishes in ten out of fourteen events and qualifying results no lower than third all season.
Bourdais successfully defended his Champ Car title in 2005 with five wins in six races towards the end of the season, again with the Newman-Haas/Lanigan team. That May, he also finished twelfth in his first Indianapolis 500.
Bourdais won a third consecutive Champ Car title in 2006. His season began with four consecutive victories at Long Beach, Houston, Monterrey, and Milwaukee, although his winning streak was ended by the emergence of A. J. Allmendinger, who won three races in a row through the middle of the season. Bourdais responded with a commanding victory from pole at San Jose, leaving him leading the Champ Car points standings.
However, an incident with his arch-rival Paul Tracy that knocked Bourdais out on the final lap of the following race in Denver, and a subsequent win by Allmendinger narrowed the gap between the two. Bourdais's win in Montreal and Allmendinger's DNF had widened his points lead to 62 points with three races left, and Bourdais clinched the championship at the next race in Surfers Paradise despite a weak performance in that race. Bourdais became the first Champ Car driver to win three consecutive titles since Ted Horn achieved the hat trick in 1948.
Bourdais won a fourth consecutive Champ Car title in 2007 with victory at Lexmark Indy 300 on 21 October.
In 2002, Bourdais got his first F1 test with the Arrows team and was signed on to drive for the team but the team was on the verge of bankruptcy. In December he tested for Renault at Jerez but fellow Frenchman Franck Montagny secured the test drive instead of Bourdais.
Bourdais returned to F1 in 2007 after being given several tests with Scuderia Toro Rosso. On 10 August 2007 it was announced Bourdais would replace Vitantonio Liuzzi at Red Bull's b-team, Toro Rosso, as team-mate to Sebastian Vettel. On 16 March 2008, Bourdais competed in his first Formula One Championship race, the 2008 Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne. After qualifying in seventeenth position, he took advantage of mistakes made by other drivers, in the first Formula One race since the 2001 San Marino Grand Prix without traction control, and worked his way up to fourth. However, with three laps remaining an engine problem forced Bourdais to retire, but he was still classified eighth having completed more than 90% of the race distance. He later inherited seventh place (and two Championship points) after the disqualification of Rubens Barrichello.
Bourdais qualified ninth for the Belgian Grand Prix. During the race he quickly gained places and held on to fifth place for much of the distance, getting as high as third and was on course for a podium position. As the rain fell harder on the last lap he was overtaken by several cars on wet tyres and finished seventh. After the race, an emotional Bourdais was close to tears following the result. This marked his best weekend of the season and his first World Championship points since Melbourne.
Bourdais qualified in fourth place for the 2008 Italian Grand Prix. However, his car would not select first gear on the grid and had to start from the pit lane, a lap down (as the race started behind the safety car, there was no warm-up lap). Although he eventually finished a lap behind the race winner, team-mate Vettel, he set the second-fastest lap of the race; only Ferrari's Kimi Räikkönen went faster. At the 2008 Japanese Grand Prix, he was sixth on the road but received a 25-second penalty for causing an avoidable accident with Felipe Massa dropping him to tenth. Few agreed with the decision – ITV Sport's Martin Brundle had stated during live TV coverage of the race that he felt Massa might receive a penalty, whilst his colleague James Allen stated that 99% of experts he spoke to felt that Bourdais did not deserve a penalty; the FIA were under such public scrutiny at the time following a string of controversial decisions that they made the unprecedented step of releasing publicly "stewards only" footage of the incident, to justify the decision.