Practice 3: Bourdais on the pace

The Frenchman lapped the 1.2-mile circuit in 37.379s, outpacing provisional pole-sitter Paul Tracy by 0.120s. The session wasn't incident free for Bourdais, however, with the Newman/Haas driver spinning off the circuit, although he managed to escape without crashing.

Mexican owner/driver Adrian Fernandez set the third fastest time, ahead of Patrick Racing driver Oriol Servia. Bruno Junqueira was fifth quickest, with Mario Dominguez sixth.

Briton Darren Manning set the seventh fastest time, and the Walker Racing driver was once again the fastest of the drivers running the Reynard chassis.

The session featured several other incidents aside from Bourdais' spin. Rodolfo Lavin caused the session to be red-flagged when he spun off under braking for Druids. Alex Yoong was another victim of the corner, the Malaysian locking up his brakes and ploughing straight into the tyre barriers. The session was finally ended two minutes early when Joel Camathias spun off.

Sebastien Bourdais Newman/Haas-Lola 37.379s
Paul Tracy Forsythe-Lola 37.499s
Adrian Fernandez Fernandez-Lola 37.530s
Oriol Servia Patrick-Lola 37.582s
Bruno Junqueira Newman/Haas-Lola 37.663s
Mario Dominguez Herdez-Lola 37.749s
Darren Manning Walker-Reynard 37.811s
Michel Jourdain Jr Rahal-Lola 37.959s
Alex Tagliani Rocketsports-Lola 38.018s
Mario Haberfeld Conquest-Reynard 38.051s