Ferran loses pole to Montoya at death

Qualifying right behind Montoya and de Ferran were Michael Andretti, Bryan Herta and Roberto Moreno.

Montoya's move to the front of the field was a surprise for everyone.

He had the provisional spot for several minutes before Michael Andretti had a flyer and grabbed first place on his sixth lap.

De Ferran wasn't sitting still though and he was back on top with several minutes still remaining in the session.

But with less than two minutes remaining in the session, Montoya reclaimed the lead place and de Ferran couldn't better that before the session ended.

Afterwards Montoya said, 'I went out on new tyres and pushed it as hard as I could. That did the trick.'

And on the slippery runways of the Burke Lakefront Airport, tyres are critical.

Several cars slid around the track as they tried to find the speed required for the final qualifying session.

Montoya never came very close to breaking the qualifying record here, held by team-mate Jimmy Vasser, of 56.417 seconds (134.385 mph) but his time of 56.813 (133.448 mph) was two-tenths of a second faster than de Ferran.

The field was much less competitive than in the first day of qualifying as only the top 10 drivers are separated by less than one second on the grid.

Today's pole is the career fourth for Montoya, a feat that brings to mind the winner of the past two events here, Alex Zanardi.

Montoya scored the Target ride this season after Zanardi moved back to Formula One.

Zanardi picked up six pole positions in his rookie year a record he shares only with Teo Fabi. Montoya is nearly there with half the season remaining.

Gil de Ferran, Friday's provisional pole sitter seemed the man to beat coming off last weekend's win in Portland.

He couldn't keep the lead though when challenged by Montoya. But he was content with the result.

'We did one pretty good lap that had us in front for a while, then Juan went out and beat it,' he said.

'We tried to squeeze out one more good lap at the end of the session but couldn't quite pull it off.'

Michael Andretti was another surprise at the front of the field. Because of an incident in the last few minutes of Friday's qualifying, he was penalised and forced to sit out the last eight minutes of this afternoon's session.

He saw his time fall and could do nothing about it, so he's happy with the number three starting spot.

'Actually,' he said, 'where I am starting is probably the best spot. You can pass here so qualifying is not that important.'

Clean driving may be the key to a good race finish. Very early in the race last year, a huge pile-up put four drivers out of the race and caused quite a shuffle throughout the rest of the field.

Bryan Herta summed it up by saying, 'The first turn of this race can get crazy, you can get caught up in some wild stuff here!'