Bourdais making MX-5 Cup one-off run at St. Petersburg

Sebastien Bourdais, back-to-back winner of IndyCar's Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg in 2017-18, is making his return to race at the event in IMSA’s Whelen Mazda MX-5 Cup series.

The four-time Champ Car champion’s appearance in the fan-favorite series is part of the Frenchman’s ongoing efforts to raise money for the local Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, which has received more than $2.2 million through his Kart4Kids charity with its annual fundraising efforts leading into St. Petersburg.

“I’m super excited to once again race on the streets of St. Petersburg!” Bourdais said. “It’s a real thrill to join the Whelen MX-5 Cup at such a meaningful place. St. Petersburg is my home and I’ve been fortunate to have success in open-wheel racing on that track. Many thanks to Mazda and MMR for putting this together, and to Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA for letting me pursue this opportunity. The whole focus of this is to raise funds for Kart4Kids, which benefits John’s Hopkins All Children’s hospital.

“Anyone interested in helping the charity can donate and have their name or company on the car. Donations start at $5,000 and go to helping kids and their families. Since its creation, Kart4Kids has raised the bar on donations, and this year with the exposure from racing in one of the most popular series in North America I hope we can bring in more funds for a very worthy cause!”

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Having raced for the Peugeot factory in its fearsome LMP1 cars and won the 24 Hours of Le Mans for Ford in 2016 within the GTE category, Bourdais’ competed in some of the fastest sports cars on the planet. Downshifting to compete for McCumbee McAleer Racing in the smallest and slowest cars at St. Pete should be a fun change of pace for the factory Cadillac FIA World Endurance Championship Hypercar driver.

“I'm flying to Qatar to test the Cadillac [tonight], and then instead of going home, I'm testing the MX-5 in Kershaw on the Tuesday next week,” said Bourdais, who’ll trade the 680hp on tap from his Cadillac V-Series.R’s barking hybrid V8 for the Mazda’s inline-4 and its buzzing 181hp. “I'll get a little taste of that and get a bit of advice from Stevan McAleer. And hopefully, we can prep pretty nicely to not embarrass myself. It's such a different thing.”