Rahal has the edge in practice

 The young American set a time of 49.366 seconds - 105.230mph - around the 1.443-mile course as he edged Robert Doornbos out of the top slot by two hundredths of a second. Having crashed in both free practice yesterday and in qualifying, the No.2 Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing driver set his fastest time on lap 42 of his 45 laps.
 
Unlike in most free practice sessions, there was no lull in track action after the initial installation laps, as the crowd had something to watch throughout the 75-minutes.

Minardi Team USA looked strong with Doornbos and Dan Clarke setting second and sixth fastest times, but Team Australia struggled, with Will Power only grabbing fourth with a last ditch attempt on his 33rd of 34 laps, and teammate Simon Pagenaud languishing down in 11th.
 
For both Newman/Haas/Lanigan and Forsythe Championship Racing, it was a session of good and bad, with the 'number ones' in the team struggling.

Paul Tracy caused two red flags - one where he was held to blame in a collision with Mario Dominguez's Pacific Coast Motorsport entry, and the second coming when he locked the brakes and understeered into a tyre wall, bending his left front suspension after just 17 laps.
 
More surprising was that provisional pole-sitter Sebastien Bourdais was simply struggling, and though he completed 33 laps, he wound up only 15th.

He remarked: "We were just getting more and more confused. We kept locking our rear tyres, like we did for a lot of yesterday, and we've spent all morning not understanding what's going on. It could be a particular set of tyres, we don't know."
 
Oriol Servia, meanwhile, revealed something of a breakthrough in terms of form for Forsythe, not only clocking third fastest time overall with a 49.423 seconds lap, but also consistently setting 49.5s.
 
Neel Jani, Katherine Legge and Jan Heylen also recovered from disappointing Friday performances for PKV Racing, Dale Coyne Racing and Conquest Racing respectively.

Pos  Driver              Team                 Time
 1.  Graham Rahal        Newman/Haas/Lanigan  49.366
 2.  Robert Doornbos     Minardi USA          49.389  + 0.023
 3.  Oriol Servia        Forsythe             49.423  + 0.057
 4.  Will Power          Team Australia       49.544  + 0.178
 5.  Justin Wilson       RSPORTS              49.721  + 0.355
 6.  Dan Clarke          Minardi USA          49.781  + 0.415
 7.  Neel Jani           PKV                  49.801  + 0.435
 8.  Alex Tagliani       RSPORTS              49.803  + 0.437
 9.  Jan Heylen          Conquest             49.826  + 0.460
10.  Katherine Legge     Dale Coyne Racing    49.926  + 0.560
11.  Simon Pagenaud      Team Australia       50.008  + 0.642
12.  Paul Tracy          Forsythe             50.060  + 0.694
13.  Bruno Junqueira     Dale Coyne Racing    50.071  + 0.705
14.  Tristan Gommendy    PKV                  50.072  + 0.706
15.  Sebastien Bourdais  Newman/Haas/Lanigan  50.108  + 0.742
16.  Mario Dominguez     Pacific Coast        50.205  + 0.839
17.  Alex Figge          Pacific Coast        50.518  + 1.152