Bourdais tops morning practice
Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing appeared ominously strong over Houston's 1.69-mile bump and grind on Saturday morning free practice
For much of the session, last year's winner Sebastien Bourdais was a full half a second clear of the field with a lap time of 58.224 seconds, and only with their final flyers did teammate Graham Rahal and RSPORTS' Justin Wilson close the gap.
Team Australia's Will Power and Simon Pagenaud clocked fourth and fifth fastest, ahead of Dan Clarke, who looked quicker than he has all year as he adapts to a car he never drove in pre-season testing.
The Team Minardi USA driver was just a thousandth of a second faster than Oriol Servia, who is subbing for Paul Tracy at Forsythe Championship Racing for the second and last race.
The other substitute - Roberto Moreno - propped up the timesheet as he piloted Alex Figge's Pacific Coast Motorsport car with his first encounter of the Houston course. However, the Brazilian got within 0.3 seconds of next slowest car, that of Katherine Legge.
Pos Driver Team Time 1. S.Bourdais Newman/Haas/Lanigan 57.276 2. Will Power Team Australia 57.934 + 0.658 3. Graham Rahal Newman/Haas/Lanigan 58.175 + 0.899 4. Robert Doornbos Minardi Team USA 58.331 + 1.055 5. Tristan Gommendy PKV 58.387 + 1.111 6. Justin Wilson RSPORTS 58.408 + 1.132 7. Bruno Junqueira Dale Coyne 58.457 + 1.181 8. Mario Dominguez Forsythe Championship 58.503 + 1.227 9. Neel Jani PKV 58.529 + 1.253 10. Dan Clarke Minardi Team USA 58.716 + 1.440 11. Alex Tagliani RSPORTS 58.983 + 1.707 12. Simon Pagenaud Team Australia 59.164 + 1.888 13. Katherine Legge Dale Coyne 59.270 + 1.994 14. Oriol Servi? Forsythe Championship 59.307 + 2.031 15. Ryan Dalziel Pacific Coast Motorsports 59.406 + 2.130 16. Roberto Moreno Pacific Coast Motorsports 1:00.231 + 2.955 17. Matthew Halliday Conquest 1:00.998 + 3.722
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