INDIANAPOLIS – The questions that bother Sebastien Bourdais are the what ifs.

What if he hadn’t crashed during qualifying at the Indianapolis 500? What if instead he’d stayed healthy and in pursuit of his fifth championship? What if he was heading to Toronto as a racer rather than a spectator, as he will be this weekend?

“I screwed up,” Bourdais said. “It’s just that simple.”

Words spoken by a man with the benefit of hindsight.

More:IndyCar Insider: Giving the old man his due and other takeaways from Iowa

2018 IndyCar: A look at next season's schedule and beyond

A month and half into, as he describes it, a monotonous rehab schedule, Bourdais can look back on it now with perfect clarity. But in those high-intensity moments just before he collided with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway SAFER barrier at 227 mph, his vision was impaired — blinded by greatness and his pursuit of it.

“We’re racers,” the Dale Coyne driver told IndyStar while rehabbing in Florida. “We can get caught up in the moment. It was my first time having a car that fast and being in position to fight for the pole. And there are not many bigger prizes than that other than winning the race. At the end of the day, I took chances I’ve never taken before.”

As Bourdais tore around the track — recording two laps better than 231 mph, a whole mph faster than anyone before him had dared to drive that Saturday — the IMS crowd went berserk.

Bourdais couldn’t hear the tens of thousands cheering him on, not at those speeds, but he didn’t need to hear them to know he was on the precipice of something extraordinary.

“When I saw those speeds, I knew,” Bourdais said, “I knew we were doing something special.”

Even after racing for decades, the 38-year-old Bourdais got caught up in the intoxicating feeling that he was the fastest man on the planet.

“That’s why I was even more caught in the moment. When you know you’re setting the pace by a fairly significant amount, it’s a great feeling, and it galvanizes you even more," he said. "So you’re even less inclined to back off at that point because you’re not about to throw that opportunity away.”

But backing off is precisely what he should have done, he admits now. The pole was not going to be won on Saturday. All he needed to do was qualify for Sunday’s Fast 9.

“At the time, I didn’t feel like I was taking chances that would have the consequences they had. It was bad judgement on my end,” he said.

Bourdais had pushed the car to its limit. He knows, because it told him so.

As he came around Turn 1 on the second lap, the car wiggled. Just a little, he remembers.

But he disregarded it. It felt like a free pass, he said, but in reality, it was only a momentary reprieve. Seconds later, Bourdais hurtled into the wall at Turn 2. If not for safety measures at IMS, the crash could have killed him.

Bourdais has watched replays of the crash since that late May afternoon, but he didn’t need to. He didn’t sustain any head injuries, and his memories of everything that happened are clear.

“It felt about what it looked like,” Bourdais said.

He knew he had broken his pelvis, among other bones.

Looking back on it now, Bourdais said his biggest mistake was that he thought he was in control. But in Indy, there’s no such thing.

“That’s the danger at Indy. You get so many attempts, so much time at that place; you can very easily become overly comfortable. You can feel like everything is under control. And control is an illusion when you’re traveling at those speeds. If the slightest thing goes not as planned, it can have big consequences ... It was not what I had in mind, that’s for sure.”

Bourdais has targeted the Sept. 3 race at Watkins Glen for his return as a driver. This weekend in Toronto, he’s resigned to trackside as a coach and cheerleader to his younger teammates, Ed Jones and Esteban Gutierrez. He’ll be happy to help from trackside in any way he can, at least until the pains and boredoms of rehab are over and he can rejoin them on the track.

Follow IndyStar Motor Sports Insider Jim Ayello on Twitter and Instagram: @jimayello.