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Free practice: Bourdais quickest

Newman/Haas Racing team-mates Sebastien Bourdais and Bruno Junqueira finished 1-2 a week ago on the Brands Hatch road course, and they repeated that result in the sole Champ Car practice session at Eurospeedway Lausitz this morning. Bourdais showed supreme confidence on his oval debut and was the fastest man throughout most of the 135-minute session

Bourdais' best lap of 36.794s (197.934mph) was well off the practice pace from 2001 when the Mo Nunn Racing duo of Tony Kanaan and Alex Zanardi lapped in the 34-second bracket, with Kanaan clocking a 34.624s lap.

The fact that the ultimate pace was 13 mph slower than the cars ran with more power and less downforce in 2001 shouldn't detract from the young Frenchman's achievement, though it is impossible to determine how much of a tow was involved. Several race engineers indicated that the draft was worth 0.8-1s per lap and predicted the pole lap would be in the 37.6s range in this afternoon's single-car qualifying session.

While Bourdais and Junqueira were able to break the 37s barrier, Mario Dominguez likewise repeated his Brands Hatch result by running third in the Herdez Lola at 37.178s. Alex Tagliani and Michel Jourdain Jr were next, followed by Walker Racing team-mates Darren Manning and Rodolfo Lavin.

Tagliani voiced concern about some of the nine rookie drivers, six of whom have never raced on an oval in their lives. Despite the high number of first-year drivers, there were no incidents during the marathon session.

"They have to treat it with more respect," said Tagliani, who ran a 37.240s lap in the Rocketsports Lola. "The officials did a good job of cautioning everyone to take it easy coming out of the pits and to stay low, but some guys are still pulling right onto the track into the path of a car that's going 90 mph faster."

Player's/Forsythe drivers Patrick Carpentier and Paul Tracy are running a slightly higher downforce configuration and they were mired in the midfield with best laps in the 37.6s range.

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