Bourdais Confident of Race Pace

As was the case on Friday, the defending series Champion and race winner was blisteringly fast in Saturday's morning practice but was unable to match those times in the afternoon's grid-determining qualifying session.

He annexed a place alongside pole-sitter Paul Tracy on the outside of the front row, but continued to be perplexed at his car's lack of pace on new rubber - especially since it had handled so well in the morning session.

"We made a big, big change compared to yesterday," related Bourdais. "There was absolutely no damage to the car, and we couldn't understand why we went so much slower with the new tyres yesterday.

"So we worked really hard last night with the McDonald's crew and got a big chunk of the offset between PT and myself out of the way.

"You know, we thought we had it right, but the more this track picks up rubber, the bigger the problem is. We came to understeer a bit too much and can't get the best out of the Bridgestone tyres, so it's a real shame."

The silver lining to that particular cloud may become apparent in the course of the 97-lap race around the tortuous, low-grip 1.657-mile street circuit, potentially giving Bourdais an advantage towards the end of each stint.

"We end up going faster with a significant amount of laps on the tyres so I guess there's some good in it and some bad," noted the Frenchman. "The bad was today; the good should be tomorrow."