Bourdais leads practice 1

The Newman/Haas driver set a time of 1:00.240, to record a lap average of 100.996mph.

His nearest challenger was the Forsythe Championship Racing car of Mario Dominguez, whose teammate Paul Tracy was languishing in eighth, after a gentle spin in the closing minutes of the session.

RuSPORT's Justin Wilson and AJ Allmendinger are third and fourth, but Technical Director David Brown admitted: "The positions look okay, but I'm not happy at how much of a fight it was for our guys to get half a second off Bourdais. We have a lot of work to do."

Oriol Servia was an impressive fifth for PKV Racing, while Team Australia's Alex Tagliani, who finished on the podium at the season opener at Long Beach kept up his momentum to go sixth quickest.

Tagliani's teammate Will Power headed the rookies who filled out the positions from ninth to 14th. The rookies had been predicted to shine here at the Reliant Park circuit at Houston, given that the track is new to everyone.

Dan Clarke had to sit out the last 20 minutes of the session when he clipped a wall in his CTE Racing-HVM car and thus missed the track at its prime, yet still wound up 11th. Teammate Nelson Philippe got even less track time after a gearbox problem.

Series debutant Nicky Pastorelli, who has replaced Antonio Pizzonia this weekend in the Rocketsports Racing car, was 13th fastest.

Pos  Driver              Team                Time             Laps
 1.  Sebastien Bourdais  Newman Haas         1:00.240          30
 2.  Mario Dominguez     Forsythe            1:00.607 + 0.367  31
 3.  Justin Wilson       RuSPORT             1:00.743 + 0.503  25
 4.  A.J. Allmendinger   RuSPORT             1:00.779 + 0.539  26
 5.  Oriol Servia        PKV                 1:00.972 + 0.732  31
 6.  Alex Tagliani       Team Australia      1:01.035 + 0.795  27
 7.  Bruno Junqueira     Newman Haas         1:01.451 + 1.211  25
 8.  Paul Tracy          Forsythe            1:01.480 + 1.240  32
 9.  Will Power          Team Australia      1:01.760 + 1.520  37
10.  Jan Heylen          Dale Coyne          1:02.012 + 1.772  28
11.  Dan Clarke          CTE HVM             1:02.021 + 1.781  13
12.  Katherine Legge     PKV                 1:02.133 + 1.893  43
13.  Nicky Pastorelli    Rocketsports        1:02.595 + 2.355  40
14.  Charles Zwolsman    Mi-Jack Conquest    1:02.645 + 2.405  34
15.  Cristiano da Matta  Dale Coyne          1:02.795 + 2.555  26
16.  Andrew Ranger       Mi-Jack Conquest    1:03.383 + 3.143  28
17.  Nelson Philippe     CTE HVM             1:04.309 + 4.069   7