Tracy fastest at Toronto

"We had a good car all day," said Tracy. "We made a change after the first set of tires, and that kind of hurt the balance, so I wasn't able to get the time in the second run.

"I had a little bit of traffic. I was anticipating a red flag when I saw A.J. [Allmendinger]'s car in the run-off but that never materialised, so we never really got the second run together. But the car's good. I think we got a good direction for tomorrow, and it's going to be quicker tomorrow, so we'll have to improve."

Bourdais was gutted to have missed out by such a small margin but is looking ahead to the weekend: "Well, I'm just a bit disappointed, because three thousandths, you take something out of the car, even a very small piece of something, and it's enough.

"But at the end of the day, the McDonald's car is in the first row, so that's pretty good. It's going to take a faster time tomorrow. We're going to work on that. But for sure last year, it was one of the toughest events for me because we got rain on and off, never really was able to find my rhythm out there. I'm much happier with the balance and the grip we have."

Bourdais also couldn't resist a needle over losing his provisional pole at Cleveland last weekend due to a penalty hours after the fact: "In Cleveland it was the opposite situation, and we just learned at 7pm we were not on the front row any more. Maybe [this time] Paul is going to have the bad news...."

Actually it was Tracy's team-mate Patrick Carpentier who go the bad news, losing his eighth fastest lap after being found guilty of blocking Junqueira. His second-fastest lap dropped the Canadian down two more places.

British star Justin Wilson continues to impress in the Conquest Racing Lola. The ex-Minardi F1 driver was just over two tenths off Tracy's best time despite having to learn yet another new circuit.