Bourdais, Doornbos clash again.

With the Mont-Tremblant blocking row not have settled amicably, a second incident between Sebastien Bourdais and Robert Doornbos in the Steelback Grand Prix of Toronto could have caused a flashpoint, but the Frenchman decided not to make an issue of contact that put him out of the race.

Despite losing the advantage of pole position at the start of the race, and then having to contend with heavy rain, Bourdais remained in contention throughout the majority of the 73-lap encounter, but was unable to make the chequered flag after being spun out of fifth place by Doornbos in the closing stages. The incident followed on from the now infamous spat between the two at Mont-Tremblant, when Bourdais publicly denounced the Dutchman's tactics while leading and refused to shake his hand on the podium.

The disagreement rolled into Toronto with the rest of the Champ Car circus, but appeared to dissipate when the three-time champion took pole and Doornbos struggled to twelfth in qualifying. However, the conditions and a five-car pile-up on lap one brought the two together with less than ten laps to run, with the final ironic twist being applied by the Minardi Team USA crew that managed to get Doornbos back on track after the clash, earning him enough points to usurp Bourdais at the head of the championship.

"Robert made a small mistake, but it had a big consequence on both the race and the standings," Bourdais said, "However, I could see in his eyes that he was sorry and he apologised after the race. I didn't see anything - he just t-boned me. He was able to continue and gained him another six or so points, which was enough to take over the lead [in the championship]."

Doornbos, for his part, accepted that the incident was largely down to him, although he reckoned that he should still have been able to pass Bourdais before the end.

"Towards the end, I was chasing Sebastien and could see that he was struggling a bit," he said, "I got on the brakes at the same place as always, but I ran up on him, lost the downforce on my car and turned him around. It was a racing incident in very tricky conditions - and it could have happened to anybody."

Having chased early leader Oriol Servia from the start, the McDonald's driver survived a brush with Justin Wilson as the Briton made an attempt to pass on lap 19 and went on to take the lead from the Forsythe car before the first round of pit-stops. He then moved up and down the top five as the various fuel strategies cycled through and the weather worsened, eventually leading to the collision that put him out and classified ninth.

"The car was good in the dry, although I had a close call when Justin just drove into the corner and the car got a little sideways," Bourdais reported, "All the action probably put on a good show for the fans but, in the wet, I wasn't quite willing to risk it all.

"We've had some tough luck this season, and we weren't going to have the greatest finish, but it was a decent result and would have kept us in the lead and got us more points than we ended up with. We had one DNF on my part in Vegas and another due to an engine failure and now, with the result today, it puts us behind."