Bourdais leads Portland test

The Frenchman, who last week won the opening round of the 2006 championship at Long Beach, ended the second day with a time of 57.335, over 0.25 seconds inside the track record at an average speed of 123.317mph around the 1.964-mile roadcourse.

"We didn't really chase lap times," said the Newman Haas driver, "but the car was consistent and I'm very confident that we will have a good starting point when we come back to race here in June. We got a lot done and I think we accomplished most of what we wanted to do."

The reigning champion was almost 0.2 seconds up on Britain's Justin Wilson whose RuSPORT car had topped the Wednesday times. The Briton, who scored his first Champ Car pole position here last year, finished just ahead of PKV Racing's Oriol Servia.

An upbeat Paul Tracy, who confesses that Portland is a track where he has never really shone, was happy to end up fourth quickest, a little over three tenths from Bourdais.

He remarked: "We weren't on the top of the charts but we were consistent throughout the whole test and I am happy about that.

"A lot of guys were up and down and all over the charts, but we were always in the top three or four. We just need to work on finding a little more speed."

AJ Allmendinger of RuSPORT was fifth, but felt he was held up on some of his quickest runs.

"Portland's obviously a difficult place to pass on - almost too difficult, actually - and there were times out there when the track was busier than on a qualifying day," Allmendinger said.

"Then at the end of the day, the track conditions got real bad in terms of the surface. It was so cold and slick, the car was sliding everywhere.

"However, Justin and I think we got a good balance on the car for all conditions here, but you know, when you test here there aren't that many tracks you're testing for. Your set-up here isn't really carried through to other circuits."

Australia's Ryan Briscoe did an impressive job in his first test for Conquest Racing, winding up 0.8 seconds faster than Conquest's regular driver Charles Zwolsman.

Briscoe was brought in to assist Zwolsman who is still nursing wrist and back injuries sustained in pre-season testing at Fontana and in the Long Beach race.

Briscoe's pace in Portland will boost his chances of claiming the second Conquest seat that Andrew Ranger occupied in Long Beach.

The Canadian is expected to also participate in the three Champ Car rounds in his home country, but autosport.com understands that he doesn't yet have the budget for the whole season.

Champ Car novice Nicky Pastorelli ended the test 0.645 seconds slower than Antonio Pizzonia who he may yet partner at Rocketsports Racing although they were rarely running simultaneously, so direct comparisons couldn't be made in the varying track conditions.

Phil Howard, team manager at Rocketsports, said: "Pastorelli did a reasonable job considering he'd only had half a day of testing with Dale Coyne before this, and had never seen the track before.

"So considering he was new to the car and the circuit, I was fairly impressed. I was pretty impressed with Pizzonia too, to be honest, because when he turned his 58.7 lap, the track was getting pretty crappy and at that point no one was going quicker.

"If we ended up running Pizzonia and/or Pastorelli this year, I reckon we'd have a pretty competitive season," Howard concluded.

"Right now though, I don't know what plans Paul [Gentilozzi, Rocketsports owner] has for either of them."

Combined times after April 12-13 test at Portland:

Pos  Driver              Team            Time            Laps
 1.  Sebastien Bourdais  Newman Haas     57.335          138
 2.  Justin Wilson       RuSPORT         57.532 + 0.198  141
 3.  Oriol Servia        PKV             57.631 + 0.296  137
 4.  Paul Tracy          Forsythe        57.663 + 0.328  112
 5.  AJ Allmendinger     RuSPORT         57.689 + 0.354  135
 6.  Bruno Junqueira     Newman Haas     57.842 + 0.507  124
 7.  Mario Dominguez     Forsythe        58.220 + 0.885   90
 8.  Will Power          Team Australia  58.251 + 0.916  114
 9.  Nelson Philippe     CTE HVM         58.273 + 0.938  132
10.  Dan Clarke          CTE HVM         58.346 + 1.011  153
11.  Alex Tagliani       Team Australia  58.471 + 1.136  126
12.  Katherine Legge     PKV             58.583 + 1.248  111
13.  Cristiano da Matta  Dale Coyne      58.650 + 1.315  137
14.  Antonio Pizzonia    Rocketsports    58.723 + 1.388   91
15.  Ryan Briscoe        Conquest        59.080 + 1.745   76
16.  Jan Heylen          Dale Coyne      59.200 + 1.865  135
17.  Nicky Pastorelli    Rocketsports    59.368 + 2.033  185
18.  Charles Zwolsman    Conquest        59.817 + 2.482   51