Bourdais on provisional pole

The French Newman/Haas Racing ace was the only driver to break the sub-minute barrier, chalking up a fastest lap of 118.558mph, while team-mate Bruno Junqueira impressed everyone with third fastest, less than 0.2 seconds away, in his first race at this circuit.

Said Bourdais: "It's a big surprise to get a 1-3 here in a qualifying session, because last year we really struggled. Newman/Haas has done a good job to sort out those issues from last year. The set-up's still not ideal because all the red flags in this morning's session meant we didn't try out all the things we wanted to."

Junqueira commented: "This is one of the toughest tracks I've been on in my life. It's only high-speed corners. It's very physical, a lot of steering effort, but also a lot of fun. It's like an oval, although with lefts and rights. I mean, if the rear end steps out on you here, you are off or in a wall."

Bourdais also paid tribute to the team for getting him onto a clear part of the track, as Paul Tracy and Alex Tagliani in particular suffered from finding themselves in traffic. Tracy was the only one of the front-runners to use the softer red tyres, which have normally been his bugbear this year. However, the red tyres here are not the ultra-sticky ones used on some road courses this year, but harder compounds that suit his style better. He wound up second.

"I know there's a lot more time in the car, but I kept hitting traffic," said the 2003 champion. "We had a good run on black [hard] tyres, and then the reds felt really good for me. I think we have a good chance at pole tomorrow."

Team-mate Allmendinger will have it all to do. Having complained of a slightly oversteering car this afternoon, he let the rear end get away from him on his first serious qualifying run.

His was not the most severe shunt of the afternoon. That was endured by the star of this morning's practice Will Power, who lost his Team Australia car over a bump in the final corner during the 10-minute pre-qualifying session. The car left the track at high speed and backed into a wall, leaving Power with nothing to drive in qualifying proper.

Justin Wilson and Cristiano da Matta were fourth and fifth quickest, the Brazilian closing down the gap to his team-mate to just 0.161 seconds, a notable step forward in his competitiveness.

Dan Clarke was top rookie with seventh fastest, a commendable effort to be just half a second slower than CTE Racing-HVM team-mate Nelson Philippe. And compatriot Katherine Legge was similarly impressive for PKV Racing, to wind up just 0.1 seconds off team-mate Oriol Servia.

However the PKV pair were split by a great performance from Charles Zwolsman of Conquest Racing. Another rookie to impress was Jan Heylen of Dale Coyne Racing who nabbed 12th, a gnat's ahead of team-mate Mario Dominguez.

Qualifying times:

Pos  Driver              Team                Time
 1.  Sebastien Bourdais  Newman/Haas       59.895
 2.  Paul Tracy          Forsythe        1:00.067  + 0.172
 3.  Bruno Junqueira     Newman/Haas     1:00.085  + 0.190
 4.  Justin Wilson       RuSPORT         1:00.251  + 0.356
 5.  Cristiano da Matta  RuSPORT         1:00.412  + 0.517
 6.  Nelson Philippe     CTE-HVM         1:00.674  + 0.780
 7.  Dan Clarke          CTE-HVM         1:01.215  + 1.320
 8.  Oriol Servia        PKV             1:01.321  + 1.426
 9.  Charles Zwolsman    Conquest        1:01.393  + 1.498
10.  Katherine Legge     PKV             1:01.417  + 1.522
11.  Alex Tagliani       Team Australia  1:01.461  + 1.566
12.  Jan Heylen          Dale Coyne      1:01.603  + 1.708
13.  Mario Dominguez     Dale Coyne      1:01.647  + 1.752
14.  Andrew Ranger       Conquest        1:01.672  + 1.777
15.  Nicky Pastorelli    Rocketsports    1:01.760  + 1.865
16.  Tonis Kasemets      Rocketsports    1:02.755  + 2.860
17.  AJ Allmendinger     Forsythe        1:03.971  + 4.076
18.  Will Power          Team Australia