Sebastien Bourdais has explained how he was surprised to even progress to the second round of qualifying for the Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama, with the Frenchman continuing to struggle around the Barber Motorsports Park.
Despite leading the championship after a productive start to the 2017 season, Bourdais has failed to trouble the top of the order throughout the weekend so far.
After progressing to the second round of qualifying Bourdais continued to struggle and eventually elected to conserve his alternate red sticker Firestone tyres for the race, as he was out-qualified by rookie team-mate Ed Jones.
"We made some major changes to the car but they didn't work,” explained Bourdais, who won the season-opener at St. Petersburg.
“There's something missing and we're just not quite understanding what it is.
“Quite truthfully to make it into the fast 12 was a big surprise with the understeer we had.
“Using another set of reds didn't feel like the right thing to do to maybe get a better lap time, so we kept a new set for tomorrow and used the same reds we ran in round one.
“We figured it was best to swallow the pill today and hope for a better day tomorrow with two brand new sets of Firestone reds.
“We're scratching our heads but we'll keep working and see what we can do.”
Prior to the weekend Bourdais stipulated that he would not let his lead in the championship detract from his preparations for the race weekend.
Due to his success at St. Petersburg and Long Beach the four-time champion is 19 points clear of James Hinchcliffe.
“As I've said before, some weekends we'll get it and some weekends we won't, but we'll keep on trying and not give up,” concluded Bourdais.
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