Grapevine: Wheldon on pole for Race of Stars

The event, organised by McLaren's Juan Pablo Montoya, sees drivers from various motor racing series compete in an Easykart around a 1-km street circuit at the Colombian port city. All income from ticket sales is aimed at helping children of the Formula Smile Foundation.

Wheldon beat host Montoya to the pole by a mere 0.046 of a second, with his fellow IRL driver Helio Castroneves third fastest.

Red Bull Racing's Christian Klien was fourth, with his teammate Tonio Liuzzi fifth, a fraction of a second behind the Austrian.

Former World Karting Champion Liuzzi was favourite, having topped the official practice session. But the Italiam struggled with carburator problems throughout today's session.

Tomorrow's first race begins at 7:00pm GMT. The final race will then start at 8:15pm GMT, and the grid will be formed by inverting the result from race 1.

More than 10,000 spectators are expected to attend, and the race will be broadcast llive by satellite channel TV Colombia.

Today's Qualifying results:

 1.  Dan Wheldon         1:15.618
 2.  Juan Pablo Montoya  1:15.664 + 0.046
 3.  Helio Castroneves   1:16.351 + 0.733
 4.  Christian Klien     1:16.380 + 0.762
 5.  Vitantonio Luizzi   1:16.402 + 0.784
 6.  Antonio Pizzonia    1:16.736 + 1.118
 7.  Christijan Albers   1:16.915 + 1.297
 8.  Roger Yasukawa      1:17.161 + 1.543
 9.  Pedro de la Rosa    1:17.228 + 1.610
10.  Oliver Ramzheimer   1:21.871 + 6.253