Bourdais beats Power to pole
Sebastien Bourdais took pole position for the Grand Prix of Houston, continuing the dominant form he has shown all weekend
The Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing driver set a time of 57.242 seconds with an average speed of 105.845mph around the 1.69-mile circuit, beating Team Australia's Will Power by 0.163 seconds.
On the second row, Justin Wilson outqualified RSPORTS teammate Alex Tagliani for the first time this year, while former GP2 driver Neel Jani scored fourth for the PKV Racing team, also out-qualifying his teammate Tristan Gommendy for the first time.
Oriol Servia did a commendable job to land fifth spot for Forsythe Championship Racing, while Graham Rahal's sixth place was a little disappointing considering his strong seam of form thus far this weekend. However, he outqualified former Atlantic rival Simon Pagenaud of Team Australia.
Both Dale Coyne Racing cars spun and lost their fastest laps, while Roberto Moreno also had his quickest run deleted for completing 16 laps - one more than the maximum permitted.
Tagliani's disappointing showing was largely down to bad timing, catching too much traffic while running his second set of soft Bridgestones, and Bruno Junqueira's spin, which brought the session to a premature end.
Pos Driver Team Time 1. S.Bourdais Newman/Haas/Lanigan 57.242 2. Will Power Team Australia 57.405 + 0.163 3. Justin Wilson RSPORTS 57.533 + 0.291 4. Neel Jani PKV 57.753 + 0.511 5. Oriol Servia Forsythe Championship 57.790 + 0.548 6. Graham Rahal Newman/Haas/Lanigan 57.896 + 0.654 7. Simon Pagenaud Team Australia 57.929 + 0.687 8. Tristan Gommendy PKV 58.026 + 0.784 9. Mario Dominguez Forsythe Championship 58.079 + 0.837 10. Bruno Junqueira Dale Coyne 58.169 + 0.927 11. Alex Tagliani RSPORTS 58.198 + 0.956 12. Dan Clarke Minardi Team USA 58.355 + 1.113 13. Robert Doornbos Minardi Team USA 58.569 + 1.327 14. Matthew Halliday Conquest 58.577 + 1.335 15. Ryan Dalziel Pacific Coast Motorsports 58.835 + 1.593 16. Roberto Moreno Pacific Coast Motorsports 59.231 + 1.989 17. Katherine Legge Dale Coyne 59.257 + 2.015
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