Qualifying 1: Tracy takes provisional pole

Tracy hustled his Team Green Lola-Honda around the 1.781-mile course in 1m01.888s to narrowly edge the Ganassi Racing Lola-Toyotas of Scott Dixon and morning practice pacesetter Kenny Brack. Team Rahal's Jimmy Vasser matched Brack's 1m01.948s lap, but the American had to revert to his second best time after his trip into the Turn Six tyres brought out a red flag. That dropped him to 13th.

Junqueira crashed much harder at the same spot with less than three minutes remaining. The Brazilian clipped the inside wall at Turn Five and when he tried to brake for Turn Six, the damaged right front suspension caused the car to veer hard into the left-side wall. The crippled machine then slid into the banded tyre wall with considerable force, but Junqueira was completely uninjured. However, losing his best lap dropped him from seventh to 14th.

The Friday pole guarantees that Tracy will start no worse than second no matter what happens in final qualifying. The Ontario native won the Vancouver race in 2000, leading Dario Franchitti in a Team Green one-two.

"Today was all about getting a clear lap," Tracy remarked. "I actually did my time on what I thought would be my last warm-up lap. I had (Alex) Tagliani coming up behind me so I had to hustle to stay ahead. I probably drove the lap at 80 percent, but I guess it was good enough. Then the red flag for Junqueira came out a few second later."

Brack was one of those drivers who was caught on a flying lap. The Swede was 0.6-second slower than he had been in the morning practice.

"A good day for us," he said. "This is a short track and there was a lot of traffic, but we managed to get one lap in. I think the time was in the car, but we never got to really go for it because of the red flags."

Dixon is looking to make his first front row start in his second year of racing Champ Cars. "We got a bit unlucky with the way the red flags fell," noted the New Zealander. "We tried some developmental stuff in the afternoon and went out early to see if it worked. That ended up working to our advantage."

Franchitti was the last driver below 1m02s, heading Christian Fittipaldi and Michel Jourdain Jr. Michael Andretti was seventh fastest and said he had the best first-day car he could remember, while Canadian favourites Alex Tagliani and Patrick Carpentier finished eighth and ninth in the times.