Bourdais tops practice 1
Sebastien Bourdais ended the first session at the Long Beach Grand Prix on top of the times sheet, with a lap time almost one second quicker than he managed in the same session last year
The Newman/Haas Racing pilot set his quickest time half way through the session, but ducked out early with a steering problem, thus missing the conditions when the track was at its most favourable.
His closest challenger was Alex Tagliani, who left it until the dying seconds to pop his Team Australia entry ahead of the RuSPORT duo of AJ Allmendinger and Justin Wilson.
Nonetheless, RuSPORT's performance hinted that they have, as expected, made a big step forward with their street-course set-up, and that come first qualifying, Allmendinger and Wilson should be able to contend for a front-row slot.
Defending pole-sitter Paul Tracy wound up fifth in the Forsythe Championship Racing car, 0.277 seconds behind Bourdais, while series returnee Bruno Junqueira was sixth in the second Newman/Haas machine.
Britons Katherine Legge and Dan Clarke both had excursions into the run-off areas in the course of the 75-minute session, but finished in a respectable 13th and 14th.
Legge was 1.2 seconds off the pace of PKV Racing teammate Oriol Servia, and just 0.65 seconds off second teammate (and team boss) Jimmy Vasser.
Formula One refugee Antonio Pizzonia was 12th for Rocketsports, a few hundredths of a second quicker than Legge.
Pos Driver Team Time Laps 1. Sebastien Bourdais Newman Haas 1:08.948 14 2. Alex Tagliani Team Australia 1:09.030 + 0.082 19 3. A.J. Allmendinger RuSPORT 1:09.043 + 0.095 17 4. Justin Wilson RuSPORT 1:09.180 + 0.232 21 5. Paul Tracy Forsythe 1:09.225 + 0.277 24 6. Bruno Junqueira Newman Haas 1:09.406 + 0.458 26 7. Mario Dominguez Forsythe 1:09.570 + 0.622 21 8. Oriol Servia PKV 1:09.735 + 0.787 22 9. Nelson Philippe CTE HVM 1:09.963 + 1.015 23 10. Will Power Team Australia 1:10.167 + 1.219 35 11. Jimmy Vasser PKV 1:10.277 + 1.329 24 12. Antonio Pizzonia Rocketsports 1:10.859 + 1.911 30 13. Katherine Legge PKV 1:10.900 + 1.952 32 14. Dan Clarke CTE HVM 1:10.911 + 1.963 28 15. Andrew Ranger Mi-Jack Conquest 1:10.943 + 1.995 21 16. Jan Heylen Dale Coyne 1:11.187 + 2.239 25 17. Cristiano da Matta Dale Coyne 1:11.189 + 2.241 19 18. Charles Zwolsman Mi-Jack Conquest 1:11.732 + 2.784 23
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