Power leads team 1-2 in practice

Team Australia's winner of the season's opening round lapped the 1.69-mile course in Reliant Park at an average speed of 101.971mph in a time of 59.417 seconds.

The bumpy course was still dirty in areas although the Star Mazda and Atlantic practice sessions had gone some way to alleviating the problem.

Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing's Sebastien Bourdais, winner of last week's round at Long Beach, was third, some 0.3 seconds shy of Power, although the Frenchman - who won this event last year - was notably more cautious than most of his rivals through the heavily modified Turn 1 chicane.

One man less cautious was the hero of Long Beach, Oriol Servia who continues to sub for Paul Tracy at Forsythe Championship Racing.

He spun twice at the chicane - on consecutive laps - and the second time stalled, bringing out a red flag. The result was that he was obliged to sit out eight minutes of the session as per the rules for causing a red, so he did well to end up slightly behind team-mate Mario Dominguez despite completing 13 fewer laps.

Justin Wilson and Alex Tagliani continued RSPORTS' impressive run of form in fourth and fifth, while Bruno Junqueira and Dale Coyne Racing continued to prove a force in sixth. However, the Brazilian's team-mate Katherine Legge spun at the end of the session and ended up near the bottom of the pile.

Pos  Driver              Team                     Time
 1.  Will Power          Team Australia         59.417
 2.  Simon Pagenaud      Team Australia         59.515  + 0.098
 3.  Sebastien Bourdais  Newman/Haas/Lanigan    59.723  + 0.306
 4.  Justin Wilson       RSPORTS                59.841  + 0.424
 5.  Alex Tagliani       RSPORTS                59.924  + 0.507
 6.  Bruno Junqueira     Dale Coyne             59.930  + 0.513
 7.  Graham Rahal        Newman/Haas/Lanigan    59.994  + 0.577
 8.  Mario Dominguez     Forsythe             1:00.068  + 0.651
 9.  Oriol Servia        Forsythe             1:00.286  + 0.869
10.  Tristan Gommendy    PKV                  1:00.367  + 0.950
11.  Robert Doornbos     Minardi USA          1:00.554  + 1.137
12.  Neel Jani           PKV                  1:00.597  + 1.180
13.  Matt Halliday       Conquest             1:00.676  + 1.259
14.  Dan Clarke          Minardi USA          1:01.410  + 1.993
15.  Ryan Dalziel        Pacific Coast        1:01.470  + 2.053
16.  Katherine Legge     Dale Coyne           1:01.769  + 2.352
17.  Alex Figge          Pacific Coast        1:02.432  + 3.015