Bourdais on Zolder pole

The Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing driver clocked tremendous three final flying laps of 1:12.882, 1:12.826 and then 1:12.821, but he believed there was a little more to come.

"I was caught up in traffic and I made a couple of little mistakes when the tyres were at their best," said Bourdais.

"So by the time I was able to go for it, the tyres were past their window, so that was a little bit stressful."

In scoring the 30th pole position of his Champ Car career (in 70 races), the Frenchman edged Robert Doornbos of Team Minardi USA by almost 0.25 seconds.

The Dutchman was confident that he had the pace yesterday, only to have it ruined by engine failure.

With his performance today was a successful damage limitation exercise, as he will start third, given that Will Power banked a front row slot with provisional pole yesterday.

The Team Australia driver said: "It played out today as we were expecting. I only ran blacks [hard compound] today after using reds for pole yesterday. We wanted to keep a fresh set of reds for tomorrow.

"I think considering we're three tenths from Sebastien, I think we'd have had pole today if we'd used reds, but we need another win, so we're thinking in terms of the race."

Fourth fastest was another spectacularly impressive effort from Bruno Junqueira for Dale Coyne Racing.

The Brazilian was half a second off erstwhile teammate Bourdais, but that was enough to pip Justin Wilson (RuSPORT) and Alex Tagliani (Rocketsports) who remain teammates in terms of engineering/technical exchange despite the re-re-branding of their teams.

Seventh fastest was Paul Tracy whose Forsythe Championship Racing team appear revitalised this weekend, and he was less than a tenth off nabbing fourth place. In fact, the grid was very close, with the top 16 covered by less than 1.2 seconds.

Jan Heylen did an excellent job to grab 11th place for Conquest Racing considering he got just one minute of track time yesterday before being drilled into the wall by the errant Minardi car of Dan Clarke.

The Briton's replacement Mario Dominguez did a competent job to take 12th considering he too got no track time yesterday.

Hard luck story of the day went to Graham Rahal, who has looked fast all weekend. However, having used a set of reds to clock fourth fastest yesterday, he spent the first half of this session on blacks.

When the Newman/Haas/Lanigan driver was just getting up to speed on his second set of reds, the session was stopped for a spin from Pacific Coast Motorsports' Alex Figge. At its recommencement, Rahal could not get a clear lap.

Pos  Driver            Team                          Time
 1.  S.Bourdais        Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing    1:12.821        
 2.  Will Power        Team Australia                1:13.194 + 0.373
 3.  Robert Doornbos   Minardi Team USA              1:13.067 + 0.246
 4.  Bruno Junqueira   Dale Coyne Racing             1:13.313 + 0.492
 5.  Justin Wilson     RuSPORT                       1:13.327 + 0.506
 6.  Alex Tagliani     Rocketsports                  1:13.384 + 0.563
 7.  Paul Tracy        Forsythe Championship Racing  1:13.407 + 0.586
 8.  Simon Pagenaud    Team Australia                1:13.436 + 0.615
 9.  Neel Jani         PKV Racing                    1:13.555 + 0.734
10.  Oriol Servia      Forsythe Championship Racing  1:13.720 + 0.899
11.  Jan Heylen        Conquest Racing               1:13.768 + 0.947
12.  Mario Dominguez   Minardi Team USA              1:13.810 + 0.989
13.  Graham Rahal      Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing    1:13.822 + 1.001
14.  Katherine Legge   Dale Coyne Racing             1:13.987 + 1.166
15.  Tristan Gommendy  PKV Racing                    1:13.995 + 1.174
16.  Ryan Dalziel      Pacific Coast Motorsports     1:14.002 + 1.181
17.  Alex Figge        Pacific Coast Motorsports     1:14.744 + 1.923