Allmendinger takes provisional pole

The American ace didn't look particularly quick on standard rubber, but switching his Forsythe Championship Racing car on to the red-walled softer compound Bridgestones put him straight to the top of the timesheets, and he eventually lowered his time to 58.621 seconds, and average speed of 107.777mph. Thus, he bagged a guaranteed front-row slot for Sunday's race.

Allmendinger commented: "This is the toughest day the No. 7 crew have had in our three weekends together. On the standard rubber, we had a lot of oversteer but I saw Paul [Tracy] switch to red tyres, and we figured reds would make more of a difference than at say, Cleveland, last race.

"We still had oversteer, but the car was a lot more balanced which is good. But I think we've still got a lot of work to do. If the race was tomorrow, I don't think we'd have the strongest car for it."

Former teammate Justin Wilson of RuSPORT got closest to AJ's time with a lap of 58.830 seconds, and in the dying seconds of the session, Nelson Philippe of CTE Racing-HVM burst into third despite running the harder compound tyres.

Philippe said: "During practice we made the car more comfortable to driver for me, and a couple of changes we've made since made me even more happy with the car.

"I didn't have the confidence that we could grab pole, so we decided to keep on blacks, and that leaves us two sets of reds to go for pole position tomorrow."

Paul Tracy was quickest driver on the track while everyone ran the hard compound, but when he switched to red tyres, he kissed the wall on his quickest run and couldn't get above fourth.

Sebastien Bourdais ran only seven laps, and wound up fifth for Newman/Haas Racing, just ahead of the second RuSPORT car of Cristiano da Matta. Bruno Junqueira and Team Australia's Alex Tagliani were the final cars to break under the minute barrier.

Pos  Driver              Team                   Time              Laps
 1.  A.J. Allmendinger   Forsythe Championship    58.621           13
 2.  Justin Wilson       RuSPORT                  58.830 + 0.209   14
 3.  Nelson Philippe     CTE HVM                  59.203 + 0.582   15
 4.  Paul Tracy          Forsythe Championship    59.274 + 0.653   14
 5.  Sebastien Bourdais  Newman Haas              59.313 + 0.692    7
 6.  Cristiano da Matta  RuSPORT                  59.343 + 0.722   14
 7.  Bruno Junqueira     Newman Haas              59.367 + 0.746   13
 8.  Oriol Servia        PKV                      59.407 + 0.786   13
 9.  Alex Tagliani       Team Australia           59.626 + 1.005   14
10.  Charles Zwolsman    Mi-Jack Conquest       1:00.387 + 1.766   15
11.  Andrew Ranger       Mi-Jack Conquest       1:00.455 + 1.834   14
12.  Mario Dominguez     Dale Coyne             1:00.556 + 1.935   12
13.  Will Power          Team Australia         1:00.588 + 1.967   14
14.  Dan Clarke          CTE HVM                1:00.688 + 2.067   15
15.  Jan Heylen          Dale Coyne             1:00.792 + 2.171   14
16.  Katherine Legge     PKV                    1:01.191 + 2.570   14
17.  Tonis Kasemets      Rocketsports           1:01.530 + 2.909   15