Mixed results for team switchers

Cristiano da Matta, whose move from Dale Coyne Racing to RuSPORT (in place of Allmendinger) catalysed the driver exchanges, only qualified 10th, although he was just 0.2 seconds slower than new teammate Justin Wilson.

Having ended up at Coyne after being dropped by Forsythe in favour of Allmendinger, Mario Dominguez struggled to 15th on his first day with the smallest team on the grid.

"We were fighting an oversteer and never got rid of it," said Dominguez. "We had a little bit of it this morning, and it just kept coming in more and more and got worse and worse."

Despite the handling problems, Dominguez was largely positive about his new environment.

"Everything has been good with the new team," he said. "They have been very receptive to me and what I have to say.

"I have to put what happened behind me and go forward and concentrate on this weekend and getting the car to go faster."

Da Matta was more sanguine about his underwhelming qualifying time.

"There are always lots of things to learn on the first day, and that's always hard," he said. "As a team, we expected to unload the cars from the transporters and have them perform a little better than they are right now.

"But, we have lots of ideas for tomorrow, and I will continue through my process of getting used to everything, and we'll try to make it better overall for tomorrow."

RuSPORT president Jeremy Dale said that he was pleased with Da Matta's progress so far.

"Cristiano has had a good day, for his first day with the team," said Dale. "They're chipping away at it.

"The morning was good, the afternoon was better, and I'm quite certain tomorrow will be more of the same."