Long Beach, Calif. ? It’s going to take more than one bad race to shake the confidence that three straight Champ Car World Series titles have given Sebastien Bourdais.

But the misery he went through in the season-opening race last weekend in the streets of Las Vegas definitely got the Frenchman thinking.

“It really felt like a bad dream. I think we really needed to get ourselves back together after a really miserable race in Las Vegas,” Bourdais said Friday after trailing only Australian phenom Will Power in the opening round of time trials for the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach.

Bourdais had to start from the rear of the field Sunday after crashing in qualifying. He then overcame three tire punctures early in the race to charge into contention before making an uncharacteristic mistake and crashing out, finishing 13th.

He said he is just happy that the 2007 season is getting started with street races on consecutive weekends as Las Vegas, Long Beach and Houston.

As upset as he was after last week’s race, Bourdais had the time to drive a motorhome from Las Vegas to Long Beach, enjoying a little free time with his wife and baby daughter. That little respite helped put his first-race problems behind and made him eager to get back into the cockpit and, hopefully, get back on track toward an unprecedented fourth straight championship.

“You need something – I wouldn’t say you need luck – but you need things not to be against you to win a championship,” Bourdais said. “Even more this year, that will be the case while we work on the reliability of these new cars.”

Everyone in the series is driving the new Panoz DP01 cars, which have had a series of teething problems, including fuel leaks, fuel coupling problems, slipping gearboxes and some other relatively minor gremlins.

Power posted a lap of 1 minute, 7.920 seconds (104.311 mph) on his last trip around the 1.968-mile, 12-turn course in downtown Long Beach.