Bourdais on front row despite errors

The Frenchman tagged the wall at Turn 4, and the consequential handling imbalance threw him off the course at Turn 2, yet he still managed to bring the Newman/Haas Racing car round the course in 1:21.193, at an average speed of 120.114mph.

The reigning champion said: "The car was good right out of the box this morning, so we didn't change anything for the afternoon, but we made small improvements.

"I think after I hit the wall, it made the car's cross-weight all wrong, so I locked up under braking for Turn 1 and we went off.

"I thought that was it for qualifying, but really the car was still fast, so I am surprised and pleased to get this pole."

Second place went to PKV Racing's Oriol Servia, the man who scored his first ever Champ Car victory at this circuit last year, and the Catalan paid tribute to his team.

"I don't think we're there yet, but it looks like we're on the right path," Servia said. "And that's mainly down to the crew and mechanics getting more and more motivated as we get nearer the front. It's great."

Bruno Junqueira was victim of a timing and scoring cock-up and had his best lap deleted when he took a short-cut... on the next lap.

The Newman/Haas driver was subsequently reinstated with a lap time of 1:21.856, and Justin Wilson of RuSPORT has been bumped to fourth.

Paul Tracy never switched to red tyres (the difference between reds and blacks has been marginal today) and wound up only fifth, a second slower than Bourdais, but a whole lot better than his Forsythe Championship Racing teammate AJ Allmendinger, whose turbo detonated on his out-lap and thus recorded no time.

Aside from Servia, without question the star of the session was Rocketsports Racing's Antonio Pizzonia, who grabbed eighth place, only half a second behind a top six slot and 1.467 seconds up on teammate Pastorelli.

Pos  Driver              Team                   Time              Laps
 1.  Sebastien Bourdais  Newman Haas            1:21.193           10
 2.  Oriol Servia        PKV                    1:21.523 + 0.330   12
 3.  Bruno Junqueira     Newman Haas            1:21.856 + 0.663   11
 4.  Justin Wilson       RuSPORT                1:22.085 + 0.892   10
 5.  Paul Tracy          Forsythe Championship  1:22.222 + 1.029   11
 6.  Nelson Philippe     CTE HVM                1:22.513 + 1.320   15
 7.  Andrew Ranger       Mi-Jack Conquest       1:22.655 + 1.462   12
 8.  Antonio Pizzonia    Rocketsports           1:22.767 + 1.574   12
 9.  Will Power          Team Australia         1:22.796 + 1.603   10
10.  Mario Dominguez     Dale Coyne             1:22.796 + 1.603   12
11.  Dan Clarke          CTE HVM                1:22.800 + 1.607   11
12.  Alex Tagliani       Team Australia         1:22.803 + 1.610   10
13.  Jan Heylen          Dale Coyne             1:22.999 + 1.806   10
14.  Charles Zwolsman    Mi-Jack Conquest       1:23.114 + 1.921   12
15.  Katherine Legge     PKV                    1:23.663 + 2.470   15
16.  Nicky Pastorelli    Rocketsports           1:24.204 + 3.011   13
17.  A.J. Allmendinger   Forsythe Championship  No time             0