Points-leader Da Matta impresses in back-up car

The Brazilian Newman/Haas driver crashed his primary Lola-Toyota in the morning practice session and hadn't turned a lap in the back-up car he qualified since early Friday morning.

Da Matta ran a 15-lap shakedown run in the T-car on Friday morning, but it was an unknown quantity when he set out to qualify. The back-up car was not equipped with a qualifying engine, so Cristiano was extremely pleased with 11th place (and 230.911mph) under the circumstances.

"I'm probably the only guy out here who qualified with the same engine and the same revs that I'll have on Sunday," da Matta said. "So 11th place isn't as bad as it looks. Maybe if I was in my primary car I could have gone faster. But because of that, I think it was a tremendous effort by Toyota. And the team did a tremendous job of making sure the cars are exactly the same.

"I think we are set for the race though," added the championship leader. "It won't be easy to start from 11th, but it's a long race, so we need to pace ourselves and move forward."