Franchitti lands pole in Australia

Bryan Herta will start next to Franchitti and will be followed by Scott Pruett, Paul Tracy and Michael Andretti.

Franchitti's fast lap of 91.703 seconds (109.724 mph) beats the record he set here last year by 0.585 seconds.

One of the amazing things about this circuit is the amount of time the drivers spend tangling with the curbs. And those bumps take a toll on the cars.

That was the big problem for Friday's provisional pole sitter, Paul Tracy. During the morning practice session, Tracy bounced off the curbs, as did all the other drivers, but Tracy's car didn't fare as well.

He ended the morning smack into a wall, the result of suspension difficulties. Given the choice of sitting the session out or withdrawing his primary car from the final qualifying session, thereby forfeiting the pole time, he chose to wait.

The slowest drivers from Friday took to the streets first and in the early going Max Papis was the fastest man on the circuit.

A red flag came out early in the session as a couple of drivers tangled with barriers on the track. When the green flag was shown again, it was still Papis at the head of the pack with a time that placed him tenth on the provisional grid.

Adrian Fernandez passed Papis for the top position in the first group and when the session was complete, Fernandez was sitting in the number two spot as the faster group came out for a run.

Bryan Herta was the quick man early in the session. His lap of 92.937seconds put him right next to Paul Tracy in the provisional line-up.

That was early in the session and within a few minutes, Juan Montoya and Herta were involved in a battle for the second spot.

With 15 minutes remaining in the session, Tracy was nowhere to be seen. Nine minutes later Herta bumped Tracy from the number one spot but it wasn't over yet.

Moments later Franchitti ripped off a lap of 92.218 seconds. He held on to the pole while the rest of the field tried to catch up.

An excellent effort from Scott Pruett catapaulted him into the number three spot with only a couple of minutes left in the session.

Franchitti wrapped up the session with his record-breaking time while his team-mate Tracy sat and watched.

The pole position is worth one point, which moves Franchitti to within 12 points of leader Juan Montoya. There are 21 points up for grabs in the race tomorrow so Montoya, starting from the number six spot, could still fly out of here with the championship in his pocket.