Qual 2: Bourdais rules

After posting a series of new track records Bourdais dipped beneath the magic one-minute mark with 10 minutes remaining. As a measure of his supremacy, the best his rivals could muster around the short, bumpy downtown track was 1m00.525s.

"The McDonald's car has been great since it was unloaded from the truck," enthused Bourdais. "The baseline set-up of the car has been good; we only really changed the wing angle so it has been a much easier weekend in Denver this year. I think I put my best lap of the weekend together at the right moment. Yesterday's lap would have been good enough to keep pole, but it's good for the team to win the pole by beating our own time."

Bruno Junqueira vaulted from fifth on the provisional grid to annex the outside front row starting berth and ensure a Newman/Haas 1-2. But having won at Denver each of the past two years the Brazilian was a little chastened to be so comprehensively outpaced by Bourdais. In his efforts to make good the deficit, Junqueira spun and bent his rear wing during his first qualifying run, but the damage was minor and he made it back out in time for a final foray on new tyres - to no avail.

"I have been struggling this weekend," he admitted. "Bridgestone brought a softer tyre here and it is faster, but the set-up from last year is not working for us this year so we have been making changes. I was able to put a reasonable lap together but I hope we can keep improving the car for the race."

Continuing the team formation at the front of the grid, Paul Tracy will share the second row with Forsythe colleague Patrick Carpentier. In contrast to Bourdais' yawning 0.6s advantage, positions two through four were blanketed by a scant 0.07s.

"We gave it all we had, and the fast lap that Sebastien put up we really had no chance of beating," acknowledged Tracy. "We really struggled for grip on the car; we just can't get the tyres to grip to this track. Newman/Haas have definitely found mechanical grip for their cars, but we plan to try a different set-up tomorrow and keep working at it."

Mario Dominguez will line up fifth on the strength of his Friday time, after his Herdez Competition Lola suffered a massive turbo failure in the 15-minute warm-up prior to final qualifying. The Mexican, who raised a few eyebrows with a combative drive at Denver last year in which he either overtook or ran into most of the field, has been near the top of the timesheets all weekend and was mortified not to be able to contend for pole.

Oriol Servia put up another impressive effort to land sixth on the grid for the underfinanced Dale Coyne Racing outfit. The Spaniard finished fourth at Cleveland in June and looked set for a similar result at Road America before the intervention of full-course yellows during the refuelling window turned the leaderboard on its head.

AJ Allmendinger rebounded from his Friday faux pas - when he ended up in the tyre barrier before completing a single flying lap - to qualify seventh for the RuSPORT team's home race. But the American was disappointed not to finish higher after setting the fifth best time in morning practice, finding that his car developed unwelcome understeer on new tyres.

Understeer on street and road courses has been the bugbear all season for countryman Ryan Hunter-Reay, who had to settle for eighth on the grid in Colorado. Justin Wilson, who is locked in a tight battle with Allmendinger for Rookie of the Year honours, was reasonably satisfied to qualify ninth for Conquest Racing.

"I am happy with my last lap of the session," said the Briton. "I decided to let it all hang out, and managed to stay away from the walls. We are struggling to find the right set-up on our Lola chassis, but hopefully we will be able to make some positive adjustments before the race and achieve a good result."

Champ Car's newest winner Alex Tagliani rounded out the top 10 for Rocketsports, while Friday star Mario Haberfeld plummeted from fourth on the overnight grid to 11th in Walker Racing's Reynard. Guy Smith continues to face a steep learning curve, having never driven a Champ Car in a street circuit environment before, and qualified a circumspect 16th.