INDYCAR: Bourdais' wild ride ends in fifth

Sebastien Bourdais started third, was dead last at the end of the Lap 1, got airborne once at the bus stop corner and then charged back to finish fifth in Sunday's Grand Prix at The Glen.

"Man, there was a lot going on and it was tough out there," said the 37-year-old veteran from France. "It didn't start out very good but I had a good car and we just kept fighting. I passed a few cars and it was a satisfying result to come back to fifth."

Initially Bourdais thought he just lost it on his own as the field funneled through Turn 1 and he, Mikhail Aleshin and Juan Montoya all spun out. Then he saw the replay on NBCSN (pictured - Bourdais is center behind Scott Dixon).

"I guess I wasn't very smart because I didn't use my push-to-pass at the start and everybody else did so I got swallowed up," he continued. "I thought I just lost it until I just watched the replay and somebody (Aleshin) hit me from behind and turned me. So obviously that put us way back and all you can do then is drive as hard as possible."

The four-time CART champion proceeded to turn some of the fastest laps of the race in his Hydroxycut Chevy as he started his charge. He caught a couple of cautions at the right time and collected his 10th top-10 finish of 2016.

"I got a lucky break with that first yellow and I'm usually good on fuel so that didn't worry me," he said.

His mastery of the black tires in qualifying nearly earned him the pole position, but he ran out of fuel on the last lap of qualifying while being a tenth of a second up on Scott Dixon's time.

"I knew we had a good car for the race, so after the spun all you can do is run as hard as possible. My only concern was that I kept getting big vibrations and blisters on the rear tires so that worried me and I was glad we made it home OK."