PARIS, March 13, 2008 (AFP) - Sebastien Bourdais has a track record of winning just about every championship he enters, yet the talented French driver has had to wait until close to his 30th birthday before getting his start in Formula One.

A native of the racing mecca of Le Mans, in central France, Bourdais is delighted with this step forward in his career, saying it was a "result of years of efforts."

"I began to think about it in 2000 when I started in Formula 3," he said.

"I´ve always had Formula One at the back of my mind, but it took me a long time to get there. In the end it was only logical as my results propelled me into Formula One.

Since childhood, Bourdais was addicted to auto sport. Encouraged by his father Patrick, a talented driver who competed several times in the Le Mans 24 Hours classic, Sebastien naturally began with karting.

His first results came in the 1990s, before joining Filiere, Auto Sport Academy in Le Mans, where he sped through all the levels.

After one season in Formula Campus in 1995 (ranked 9th), he switched to Formula Renault a year later (ranked 7th and 2nd in 1997) before joining Formula 3.

After a first year in 1998 when he placed sixth, Bourdais won the French championship in 1999, the same year in which he competed for the first time in the Le Mans 24 Hours.

He continued to excel in Formula 3 wunning the the drivers title in his third season in 2002.

That was the same year of his first attempt to get into Formula 1, with Renault, but the French outfit eventually preffered his compatriot Franck Montagny to be their test driver.

"I was not too upset, I knew what the rules were," he recalled with his usual calm. I decided to focus instead on Champcar."

That decision resulted in exile for Bourdais, as he chose to cross the Atlantic and take the wheel with the Newman/Haas team. A new life began and the French racer quickly left his mark in the hugely popular sport.

Ranked fourth and voted best debutant in his first year, he went from success to success and became the first driver to win four Champcar titles in a row.

That provided a definite proof of his talent in a series where the drivers are all on an equal footing and it finally opened the doors of F1 for him.

"I have spent five fantastic years, being able to show what I know. I had a great team and lots of friends in the United States, but for me, the time has come to switch to something else," said Bourdais.

His arrival in F1 though is with one of the smaller outfits - the modest Toro Rosso team.

"I am not naive, I know very well that this will be a difficult year," he said.

"Of course we would like to win points as often as possible, but we must be realistic, it will not happen every weekend," he added

His team-mate, 20-year old German driver Sebastian Vettel, says he is delighted to have the French racer as his teammate.

"We get along well although he is a little older than me and we still need to get to know each better better," Vettel said.

The team´s manager Franz Tost said Bourdais "will have to get accustomed to the rhythm of race weekend and the first Grand Prix will certainly not be easy for him."

"But I think that from his fifth or the sixth race, he will become a real contender," Tost estimated.

Bourdais will be the first French driver to start a Grand Prix since Montagny, who raced for several months for the Super Aguri team finishing in July 2006.

"Now, it is the beginning of a new adventure and I hope that it will last a long time," Bourdais said.

All French fans of Formula 1 hope the same.