PKV 1-2 on final day at Sebring

The Catalan, who has not yet been signed up for the 2007 season, completed 33 laps in the wet morning session driving the car that team co-owner Jimmy Vasser had using over the previous two days.

Servia then put a further 77 laps under its wheels in the three-hour afternoon session and in the dying minutes pipped his rookie PKV partner Neel Jani by 0.15 seconds to lap the Sebring short course in 50.741 seconds.

Servia said: "Well, it's good timing isn't it? I really hope I can stay here and work because I really believe this team can make a big step forward this year. We're still learning about this new car's roll centres and ride heights and how they effect downforce levels, but we've ended up quickest.

"This Panoz feels so much better than the old car, so much more stable. And I'm impressed that there haven't been more new car problems than we've had."

PKV Team Manager Mark Johnson was delighted with the progress the team has made over the three test days. He said: "We had a trouble free day, and showed our potential.

"We ran more laps in this morning's wet session than anyone else because what we were testing were things that weren't affected by track conditions. So we ironed out the niggles we've had the last few days and got some set-up work done.

Johnson also admitted that the test results had confirmed his belief that a Jani-Servia line-up would be perfect for PKV. "I'm very impressed with Neel [Jani] as he was up against seasoned Champ Car veterans. I'm delighted he's on board already.

"As for Oriol, we all know he's a great ambassador for the series, a great man to have on your side. Today he's helped us, we've helped him and really it's no secret we'd love to have him back with us this season."

Paul Tracy was third quickest for Forsythe Championship Racing with a time of 50.925 seconds, and left for the Daytona 24 Hours in good spirits. He said: "The car's pretty good and we were pretty trouble-free today.

"My quickest time was set without using the Power to Pass boost, because I'd used all that up on the lap before. Plus I know we are running to weight and we've been top two or three every session. The only other drivers I reckon are running to weight are the other big guys - Justin [Wilson, RuSPORT], and Graham [Rahal, Newman/Haas Racing]."

His engineer Eric Zeto concurred. "We've got through a lot of work considering some of the problems we had the first two days. And knowing he's the only driver for our team, Paul seems even more focused than usual about working through the test programme."

Sebastien Bourdais was fourth fastest with a time of 51.056 seconds after completing more laps than anyone else this afternoon (83).

The Newman/Haas driver stated: "We spent the first hour of the afternoon session drying the race track then we had to bed brakes because the old ones were shot. That took 25 minutes. The track was really green to start with so it was hard to set a fast time.

"My first run wasn't too good. We started to try to work on the setup and a lot of red flags came out so we had to juggle. We were able to test couple of things which were interesting. Unfortunately we encountered an engine issue which lost us the last 30 minutes."

Bruno Junqueira and Katherine Legge continued their fine form for Dale Coyne Racing with fifth and ninth fastest respectively, but both were affected by gearbox problems. The Brazilian found his downshift so tardy that he was having to go round the hairpin in third, while Legge's paddleshift gear selection ceased operation altogether and she was able to complete only 24 laps.

Mario Dominguez and Justin Wilson clocked sixth and eighth fastest times respectively for RuSPORT, split by Newman/Haas rookie Graham Rahal. Alex Tagliani got a decent amount of miles out of the Rocketsports car, while Nelson Philippe lost his brakes altogether on his final runs and was unable to set a flying lap.

Will Power completed just 19 laps for Team Australia this afternoon before his Cosworth engine suffered a terminal misfire, but he was better off than rookie Alex Figge of Pacific Coast Motorsports who had just seven laps to his name before gearbox problems ended his day. Team-mate Ryan Dalziel was afflicted by a similar issue but not to the same extent.

Pacific Coast's team manager Tyler Tadevic stated: "That was a tough test, though as a new team we came out with realistic expectations.

"However, we were victims of gearbox issues with both cars off and on, particularly with Alex's car. We really needed miles under our belts, not only for our drivers but also our engineers. But the box worked okay at seven-tenths pace, and when we started working it hard under hard braking and g-loads, that's when it went wrong.

"On the other hand, whatever we are officially a Champ Car team and I'm just superexcited about that. We're having gearbox problems with our new Champ Cars, man! I'll live with that and we'll get Hewland to fix it for us. We've got a lot of work to do too, but we'll be ready to go at the next test, for sure."