ESPN Champ Car

HOUSTON -- Sebastien Bourdais got a quick kiss from wife Claire before the start of the Grand Prix of Houston.

"Ready?" she asked.

He nodded, then showed just how much, coming from behind to win again and continue his dominance of the Champ Car World Series.

Bourdais overcame a No. 5 starting position and a slow early pit stop, then held off Paul Tracy by 1.238 seconds to win for the seventh time in nine starts. Bourdais is 2-for-2 this year after also winning the season-opening race in Long Beach on April 9.

"I quite honestly would've never believed we could have won that race at the start," said Bourdais, who has 18th career victories. "When races go your way, they go your way. That was the case tonight."

Bourdais led the final 33 laps on the 1.69-mile course set up in the 345-acre parking lot next to the Astrodome and Reliant Stadium, home of the NFL's Houston Texans.

The 27-year-old Frenchman took another step toward becoming the first driver since Ted Horn in the 1940s to win three consecutive Champ Car titles.

Tracy, Champ Car's winningest active driver, never led en route to his 19th career runner-up finish -- and the fifth time he has finished second to Bourdais.

"We weren't the fastest car on the track, but it was a steady night for us," said Tracy, who earned his 70th podium finish.

Mario Dominguez, who earned his first career pole Friday, led 64 of the first 66 laps but settled for third, 2.287 seconds behind Bourdais.

The victory finished an up-and-down week for Bourdais, who married longtime girlfriend Claire Ragot last weekend in Le Mans.

Bourdais got sick on the flight to Houston and visited a doctor. He recovered in time to record the fastest qualifying time in Thursday's provisional qualifying. But two hours after the session ended, his Ford-Cosworth-powered Lola failed an inspection. It was three pounds underweight and Bourdais' time was disqualified.

But with team co-owner Paul Newman and his new bride watching from the pits, Bourdais held nothing back from the start of Saturday's race, weaving his way to third in the first eight laps. He passed his Newman/Haas teammate, Bruno Junqueira, on lap 9, then overtook Dominguez on lap 27, just before the yellow caution flag appeared for the first time.

"It was just one of those situations where you start and you feel really, really strong," Bourdais said. "I pushed really hard when I was 100 percent fresh."

Every driver on the lead lap went to the pits on the next lap and Dominguez got out ahead of Bourdais to move back in front. Bourdais lost the critical seconds when an air pump malfunctioned during the pit stop.

Tracy, who started from the No. 3 position, patiently watched the duel ahead of him for the first half of the race, staying within 2 seconds of the lead.

Dominguez maintained his cushion until the 67th lap, when his brakes locked heading into the fifth turn. Bourdais and Tracy passed him as Dominguez spun his car in a runoff area and quickly got back in the race.

Bourdais got four new tires on a 9.9-second pit stop on the 70th lap and his timing was perfect. He returned to the track just before Charles Zwolsman rubbed tires with Will Power and hit the wall, forcing another caution.

Tracy also made a speedy stop before Zwolsman's wreck to keep pace with Bourdais. The race restarted with 24 laps to go.

Alex Tagliani crashed into Oriol Servia in the same turn where Power and Zwolsman collided, drawing another caution flag with 11 laps left.

The race restarted for the final time with only five laps remaining, but Tracy couldn't mount a serious challenge before Bourdais crossed the finish line.

"I knew what we needed to do and that was get some points," Tracy said.

The Champ Car series was back in Houston for the first time since 2001, when it was run on a downtown course. Drivers complained all week about the dangerously hard and frequent bumps on the course at Reliant Park and race officials responded by shortening the race from 115 to 100 laps.

Tracy was still feeling bruised afterward.

"I'm sitting on the floor of my car and the track just beat the hell out of me," he said. "It really pounded me."

Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press