Bourdais takes astounding pole

 The Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing driver scorched around the 4.048-mile course in 1:41.535, at an average speed of 143.525mph, to stretch his advantage over his two principal championship rivals, Will Power and Robert Doornbos.
 
Bourdais, who suffered a broken gearbox in morning practice, was not sure whether to go out and set his last two amazing lap times.

He explained: "I said to Craig [Hampson, race engineer], 'What do we do, it doesn't seem like anyone's coming to get us.' But we decided to go for it, because some people were starting to go faster today than they had yesterday. You'd feel stupid to not attempt to improve, and then someone comes in and nips you for pole."
 
Regarding track conditions, Bourdais said: "It definitely felt better today. I was flat in places I wasn't yesterday, and the car was super well-balanced, and I was really into a rhythm. You don't feel like you're risking much to go flat out when it's all going that well."
 
Bourdais' title rival Power ruined his afternoon by making a too late a call to switch the black (harder compound) tyres, having been unable to find good speed on the red tyres.
 
This meant the Team Australia driver was unable to improve on his Friday time - along with 50 per cent of his rivals - but he set a good enough time yesterday to retain his front row slot. By contrast Minardi Team USA driver Doornbos clocked the second fastest time of the session with a lap that moved him to third place overall.
 
"I had a dashboard that didn't work, so the engineers had to shout the times to me over the radio," he said.

"Coming up that long straight at high revs, it was hard to hear what they were telling me. Also, I was sitting in the pits with reds on waiting to go, and I had a sudden change of mind and quickly asked the team to go on blacks. So the boys did well to get me out there in time for me to do that lap."
 
Graham Rahal boosted himself up to fourth on the grid in the second Newman/Haas/Lanigan machine, holding off Bruno Junqueira who did a superb job in the Dale Coyne Racing car to claim fifth on the grid.

Alex Tagliani of RSPORTS will start sixth, but teammate Justin Wilson spun on his final run, ruining his attempts to get onto the front two rows. The Briton will start 10th.
 
Jan Heylen did an excellent job to go sixth fastest in the session, and will start ninth on the grid for Conquest Racing, but Ryan Dalziel, star of Friday's session slipped back to 13th for Pacific Coast Motorsports.
 
If PCM are disappointed with that, they can at least console themselves with the thought that Dalziel will start ahead of both Forsythe Championship Racing cars.

Forsythe's difficult 2007 season reached a new low today. Paul Tracy had a spin that caused a red flag and was thus forced to lose his fastest time of the day, but this barely made a difference, so disastrous has his handling been this weekend.
 
Meanwhile teammate Oriol Servia failed to complete a lap in today's session. The team struggled to get his car going, and on his out-lap it expired at Turn 3 and had to be abandoned.

Pos  Driver              Team                 Time
 1.  Sebastien Bourdais  Newman/Haas/Lanigan  1:41.535
 2.  Will Power          Team Australia       1:43.116
 3.  Robert Doornbos     Minardi Team USA     1:43.134
 4.  Graham Rahal        Newman/Haas/Lanigan  1:43.162
 5.  Bruno Junqueira     Dale Coyne Racing    1:43.201
 6.  Alex Tagliani       RSPORTS              1:43.374
 7.  Neel Jani           PKV Racing           1:43.417
 8.  Dan Clarke          Minardi Team USA     1:43.439
 9.  Jan Heylen          Conquest Racing      1:43.523
10.  Justin Wilson       RSPORTS              1:43.525
11.  Tristan Gommendy    PKV Racing           1:43.565
12.  Simon Pagenaud      Team Australia       1:43.581
13.  Ryan Dalziel        Pacific Coast        1:43.611
14.  Oriol Servia        Forsythe             1:43.710
15.  Alex Figge          Pacific Coast        1:44.027
16.  Paul Tracy          Forsythe             1:44.716
17.  Katherine Legge     Dale Coyne Racing    1:46.901