Bourdais' Champ Car prowess on street circuits should serve him well at the Principality. (LAT photo) » More Photos

Inevitably, as the only Frenchman Bourdais has been the focus of media attention, and he’s well aware that the country has high expectations after being without a regular winner since Alain Prost’s last season in 2003.

“That’s the way it goes, in F1 you have to be on the spotlight. But there’s nobody who’s going to put more expectations on myself than me. I’m not doing it for anybody else than myself, and I’m the first one who wants me to perform, to work hard.”

Magny-Cours is still to come in late June, but the burden of being the only Frenchman in the field will be very apparent at Monaco this weekend, where he is the nearest thing to a local hero. With driver input counting for more, he has a chance to really make an impression.

“Monaco is a special one for the French and we’re going to have the new car, so we should be a bit more competitive. Obviously it’s all going to be new. When you get to Monaco with a car you don’t know at all, it’s always a bit complicated. But we should have more performance.

“I was last there in 2002, it was a while back. Last time we went there we won, which was quite nice. Although I know we won’t repeat that! It’s a one-off, a very atypical circuit.

“Monaco is like a road course with no run-offs. It’s quite fast for a street course, really. In the States they are very bumpy, most of the time concrete, with 90-degree corners. In Monaco it’s a very twisty and technical road, so it’s a great track. There’s no room for error, if you get it ever so slightly wrong, it’s game over. It’s a very tempting game, but you need to go very small step by small step.”

Of course, had things worked out differently at the end of last season Sebastien might be racing not at Monaco, but at the Indianapolis 500. Never a fan of the IRL, he is glad that he got his timing right, but remains disappointed that the series he dominated is no more.

“It’s a real shame, the way the whole thing happened,” Bourdais reckons. “The whole time I was over there everyone was waiting for it, and now it finally happened, I feel very bad. It’s not combining the series, it’s getting rid of one...”