By alley - Nov 23, 2015, 2:15 PM ET

IndyCar season review: Sebastien Bourdais

What will you remember the 2015 IndyCar season for? Juan Pablo Montoya's teflon coating wearing off right at the time he needed it most? The introduction of the aero kits, several years after they were first mooted? Rocky Moran Jr.'s inspiring hour of track time at Long Beach?

To try to make sense of it all, RACER's Marshall Pruett, Robin Miller and Mark Glendenning asked each other some searching questions about all of 2015's regulars, which for the purpose of this review, includes anyone who started a minimum of half the races. Look for new installments every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS
2015 starts: 16
2015 best finish: 1st (Detroit, Sunday race; Milwaukee)
2015 championship position: 10th; 406pts

KV had the chance to sign Justin Wilson as Seb's teammate for 2015. How might Wilson have improved the team's/Seb's fortunes with a proper two-car effort working in tandem?

MARSHALL PRUETT: Good Lord. Imagine Justin, with a dominant Chevy-powered Dallara DW12, at KV, with his longtime friend Bourdais in the sister car for an entire season ...

Wilson's technical feedback would have definitely elevated the team, giving KV's engineers incredible input from both drivers to perfect their setups. And with Justin's dogged racing style, it's easy to picture a few wins coming his way to go with the two Bourdais earned in 2015. Bourdais drove like a man possessed this year, yet settled for 10th in the championship as a defacto one-car operation.

The pairing of Bourdais and Wilson would have made KV the best two-car operation in IndyCar, and I'd wager they also would have pushed the three- and four-car teams to the brink. Together, I have to believe they would have moved KV deep inside the top 10.

Based on potential alone, knowing that Justin was so close to landing the ride, yet lost out to the rolling crashfest known as Stefano Coletti, is incredibly sad. It's sad not only for the big man, but also for how much higher Bourdais and the overall KV operation would have soared with Wilson in the program.

Is Bourdais driving better than ever?

ROBIN MILLER: When everything is right, like it was at Milwaukee, Seb can still be untouchable like he was during his old Champ Car days. But considering KVSH's budget limitations, it's not wrong to think he's driving as well as ever at age 36. And the gauge is qualifying, where made four Fast Sixes and six other showings inside the top 10 in what amounted to a one-car team, since he hardly got much input form his rookie teammate.

On days like Detroit, when he led the final 18 laps, Bourdais reminds us that in IndyCar - unlike F1 - a great driver with the right engineer can still make a difference, and nobody is any better on a street circuit. Winning on an oval was a bonus, of course, but Seabass is always in the conversation when IndyCar goes road racing.

Two wins, 10th in the championship. Realistically, how much more could Bourdais have hoped for?

MARK GLENDENNING: Well he matched Juan Pablo Montoya, Will Power, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Graham Rahal and Josef Newgarden on the win count, so when you put it in those terms, he had a great year. And when you consider the limited resources at KV, there's aren't many names ahead of him in the final standings who look out of place - the usual bunch of Penske, Ganassi and Andretti cars, along with a couple of guys who had breakout seasons.

That said, Bourdais' bad finish to the season did cost him. He was sixth in the points as late as Iowa, but then conceded four spots over the final three races: at Mid-Ohio he was screwed by the yellows, he stuck his car into the fence at Pocono, and earned a penalty for driving into the back of Graham Rahal at Sonoma. If we count two of those three as avoidable, then yes, he could have finished higher up the table than he did. Marco Andretti, Tony Kanaan, Hunter-Reay and Newgarden all overtook him in the points between Iowa and Sonoma. (In fairness, Hunter-Reay picked up both of his wins during that stretch, and there's not much you can do when someone goes on a run like that).

Ultimately though, I'm not sure that the difference between finishing seventh and tenth in the championship is the sort of thing that's going to cause the Frenchman any sleepless nights during the winter. And especially not when there were some real positives to draw from 2015: he and the KV pitwall were flawless at Milwaukee, for example. It was weekends like that where you wondered what the team might really have been able to achieve if it had someone a little stronger in the second car.