Practice 1 & 2: Tracy times two

Adrian Fernandez was Tracy's closest challenger in the first session, and the Mexican maintained his form by running fourth in the second session on 1m10.420s. Bruno Junqueira emerged second fastest, with a 1m10.199s lap in his Newman/Haas Lola-Ford, while Tracy's team-mate Patrick Carpentier was third on 1m10.262s.

The initial session was almost incident-free, with Walker Racing rookie Rodolfo Lavin causing the only brief stoppage. The second session was delayed by a traffic jam at the hairpin that didn't feature any contact but resulted in half a dozen cars having to wait until the track was cleared.

Roberto Moreno was consistently quick, with the third best lap in the first session and fifth in the second, while American Spirit Team Johansson's Ryan Hunter-Reay and Jimmy Vasser were the only other drivers to crack the top ten in both sessions.

The Newman/Haas cars didn't even run on slicks during the first session, and Sebastien Bourdais was 12th fastest in the second session while getting his first real taste of the 1.968-mile Long Beach street course.

Darren Manning was fifth fastest in the first session but the Yorkshireman could only manage 15th in the second practice.