Four out of four for Bourdais

The Frenchman wound his Newman/Haas Lola-Ford to 1:13.253, over a quarter of a second up on RuSPORT's Justin Wilson.

Wilson, who had already secured a place on the front row by qualifying fastest yesterday, left it until the last eight minutes to go for his flyer. An off-course excursion, however, ruined one of the Briton's laps.

Wilson's RuSPORT teammate AJ Allmendinger was a further quarter of a second off in third, to beat the second Newman/Haas car of Bruno Junqueira.

Forsythe Championship Racing's Paul Tracy encountered some braking difficulties but was still quick enough to secure fifth, half a second up on Team Australia's Alex Tagliani. Their respective teammates, Mario Dominguez and Will Power, will start eighth and ninth.

Oriol Servia just failed to beat Tagliani and wound up seventh, but his PKV Racing teammate Katherine Legge stopped on course twice, causing two red flags, and will line up last having been docked her two quickest laps.

Two rookies, Charles Zwolsman (Conquest Racing) and Jan Heylen (Dale Coyne Racing), did excellent jobs to beat their respective teammates Andrew Ranger and Cristiano da Matta.

Dan Clarke also kept out of trouble and outqualified CTE Racing-HVM teammate Nelson Philippe.

Pos  Driver              Team              Time              Laps
 1.  Sebastien Bourdais  Newman/Haas       1:13.253           10
 2.  Justin Wilson       RuSPORT           1:13.532 + 0.279   11
 3.  A.J. Allmendinger   RuSPORT           1:13.796 + 0.543   11
 4.  Bruno Junqueira     Newman/Haas       1:13.911 + 0.658   11
 5.  Paul Tracy          Forsythe          1:14.009 + 0.756   13
 6.  Alex Tagliani       Team Australia    1:14.534 + 1.281   12
 7.  Oriol Servia        PKV               1:14.553 + 1.300   12
 8.  Mario Dominguez     Forsythe          1:14.692 + 1.439   15
 9.  Will Power          Team Australia    1:14.884 + 1.631   11
10.  Charles Zwolsman    Mi-Jack Conquest  1:15.162 + 1.909   14
11.  Jan Heylen          Dale Coyne        1:15.220 + 1.967   14
12.  Cristiano da Matta  Dale Coyne        1:15.253 + 2.000   14
13.  Andrew Ranger       Mi-Jack Conquest  1:15.410 + 2.157   13
14.  Dan Clarke          CTE - HVM         1:15.484 + 2.231   15
15.  Nelson Philippe     CTE - HVM         1:15.540 + 2.287   12
16.  Nicky Pastorelli    Rocketsports      1:16.285 + 3.032   15
17.  Katherine Legge     PKV               1:16.351 + 3.098   13