He was a Peugeot Sport factory driver from 2007 to 2011, finishing runner-up three times at his home race, the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

[citation needed] Bourdais progressed to single-seater racing in 1995, finishing 9th in the Formula Campus by Renault and Elf Championship.

He then spent two years in the French Formula Renault Championship, ultimately finishing second in points in 1997 after winning four races and five pole positions.

[citation needed] Following his success in the lower formulae, Bourdais joined the Prost Junior Team in the International F3000 Championship.

However, he did not finish higher than 11th until his fourth race, when he led 95 laps en route to his first Champ Car victory at Brands Hatch.

Staying with Newman-Haas for 2004, Bourdais dominated the Champ Car series with seven wins and eight poles in his McDonald's-sponsored Lola, beating his teammate Junqueira by 28 points.

Bourdais responded with a commanding victory from pole at San Jose, leaving him leading the Champ Car points standings.

However, an incident with his arch-rival Paul Tracy that knocked him out on the final lap of the following race in Denver, and a subsequent win by Allmendinger narrowed the gap between the two.

Bourdais became the first Champ Car driver to win three consecutive titles since Ted Horn achieved the hat trick in 1948.

On 10 August 2007 it was announced Bourdais would replace Vitantonio Liuzzi[5] at Red Bull's b-team, Toro Rosso, as team-mate to Sebastian Vettel.

After qualifying in 17th position he took advantage of mistakes made by other drivers, in the first Formula One race since the 2001 San Marino Grand Prix without traction control, and worked his way up to fourth.

At the 2008 Japanese Grand Prix he was 6th on the road but received a 25-second penalty for causing an avoidable accident with Felipe Massa dropping him to 10th.

Few agreed with the decision – ITV Sport's Martin Brundle had stated during live TV coverage of the race that he felt Massa might receive a penalty, whilst his colleague James Allen stated that 99% of experts he spoke to felt that Bourdais did not deserve a penalty; the FIA were under such public scrutiny at the time following a string of controversial decisions that they made the unprecedented step of releasing publicly "stewards only" footage of the incident, to justify the decision.

[7] Despite two points finishes in the year at the Australian Grand Prix and in Monaco, Bourdais struggled to match his less experienced team-mate.

In Spain Bourdais struck Buemi's car as the field attempted to avoid a spun Jarno Trulli on the first lap, ending the race for both drivers.

Toro Rosso's Franz Tost said the partnership had not met up to his expectations, and Bourdais would be replaced as of the Hungarian Grand Prix.

[10] Bourdais has frequently contested the famous 24-hour race of his hometown, entering for the first time in 1999 (aged only 20) in a Porsche 911 GT2 run by Larbre Compétition.

He won the Spa 24 Hours in 2002 with Christophe Bouchut, David Terrien and Vincent Vosse in a Larbre Compétition Chrysler Viper GTS-R.

Bourdais recorded incredibly fast laps before the car retired due to an engine failure with Collard at the wheel.

In October 2010, Bourdais drove with Jonathon Webb in the Mother Racing Ford Falcon V8 Supercar in the Gold Coast 600.

In October 2011, Bourdais drove with Jamie Whincup in the Team Vodafone Holden Commodore V8 Supercar in the Gold Coast 600, winning Saturday's opening race and finishing second in the second race landed Bourdais the inaugural Dan Wheldon Memorial Trophy, awarded to the international driver who scored the most points over the Gold Coast weekend.

In July 2012, Bourdais won the inaugural Brickyard Grand Prix Rolex Sports Car Series race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, teaming with Alex Popow in the No.

In his first full-time season in the IRL (2011) with Dale Coyne, Bourdais wound up 23rd in the championship, scoring the fastest race lap at Edmonton.

A switch to Dragon Racing Team for 2012–13, first with the ill-fated Lotus, then with improved Chevrolet power, he finished 25th and 12th, respectively, in the IndyCar championship.

By midpoint in the 2015 season, his second year driving for Jimmy Vasser's KV Racing team alongside teammate Stefano Coletti, Bourdais's stock steadily rose, to top 20 status in the world drivers' ranking.

On 20 July 2014, having won the 1st heat race in Toronto, Sébastien Bourdais joined Al Unser Jr. and Ryan Hunter-Reay as the third driver in the history of organised motorsport to score open-wheel Championship Racing victories, under three sanctioning bodies (e.g., CART, and CCWS, and IRL sanction), in North America.

In his first race back to DCR, Bourdais won the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg to start the 2017 season coming from last after a qualifying crash, on 12 March 2017.

He backed this up with another recovery drive at the Long Beach race, starting from ninth and making an early rear wing change, to finish second, extending his lead in the series standings.

On the final restart, Alexander Rossi divebombed the first corner and got his tires locked up on the slick airport runway paint and got into race leader Robert Wickens who had led 67 laps that day and Bourdais snuck by to win.

[27] At the season finale at Long Beach Bourdais announced that 2021 would be his last year competing full time in the IndyCar Series and that he intended to focus his efforts on sports car racing in the future.