Bourdais holds off Pagenaud for pole

 Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing sent their reigning champion out on red, soft-walled tyres for his opening run, and most other drivers followed suit.

However, Pagenaud ran on blacks, and nailed a 56.388 seconds lap to pip his Team Australia partner Will Power to the front row. His subsequent runs on reds were inconclusive due to traffic and a red flag.
 
Bourdais' 56.363 second lap of the 2.106-mile Burke Lakefront Airport course gave him an average speed of 134.564mph, but like Pagenaud he suffered traffic problems when he switched to blacks and so was unable to improve.
 
Consequently, others too tried black tyres, but no-one displaced Pagenaud from his first front row start. Bourdais' teammate Graham Rahal started on blacks and switched to reds, but it was on the former compound when he set his excellent 56.588 seconds lap, which gives him fourth fastest, his highest start yet in a Champ Car race.
 
Fifth and sixth from Robert Doornbos and Dan Clarke proved Team Minardi USA's lack of concern during practice was fully justified, and Clarke will therefore be the highest placed Briton on the grid. Justin Wilson was only able to salvage eighth fastest, just ahead of RSPORTS team mate Alex Tagliani.
 
Seventh and 10th went to Paul Tracy and Oriol Servia of Forsythe Championship Racing, while 11th and 12th was a disappointing outcome for Neel Jani and Tristan Gommendy of PKV Racing.
 
Alex Figges's 13th represents his highest start in Champ Car racing, as the American got the Pacific Coast Motorsports car within 1.3 seconds of Bourdais, a hugely impressive effort - as was Katherine Legge's drive to wind up just 0.058 seconds off Dale Coyne Racing team-mate Bruno Junqueira.

Pos  Driver              Team                 Time
 1.  Sebastien Bourdais  Newman/Haas/Lanigan  56.363
 2.  Simon Pagenaud      Team Australia       56.388  + 0.025
 3.  Will Power          Team Australia       56.473  + 0.110
 4.  Graham Rahal        Newman/Haas/Lanigan  56.588  + 0.225
 5.  Robert Doornbos     Minardi Team USA     56.751  + 0.388
 6.  Dan Clarke          Minardi Team USA     57.001  + 0.638
 7.  Paul Tracy          Forsythe             57.065  + 0.702
 8.  Justin Wilson       RSPORTS              57.079  + 0.716
 9.  Alex Tagliani       RSPORTS              57.199  + 0.836
10.  Oriol Servia        Forsythe             57.380  + 1.017
11.  Neel Jani           PKV Racing           57.400  + 1.037
12.  Tristan Gommendy    PKV Racing           57.516  + 1.153
13.  Alex Figge          Pacific Coast        57.626  + 1.263
14.  Bruno Junqueira     Dale Coyne Racing    57.758  + 1.395
15.  Katherine Legge     Dale Coyne Racing    57.811  + 1.448
16.  Ryan Dalziel        Pacific Coast        57.928  + 1.565
17.  Jan Heylen          Conquest Racing      58.116  + 1.753