Tracy fastest in third practice

He was made to sit out the last five minutes of the session for 'unsportsmanlike conduct' (holding up another driver's flying lap) but Tracy's final flying lap before being benched extended the gap to 0.352 seconds over his closest pursuer, RuSPORT's Justin Wilson.

Newman/Haas Racing's Sebastien Bourdais' times plateaued with 20 minutes of the session remaining, but the fact that almost everyone was running on well-used hard compound tyres means that the times give little indication of how this afternoon's qualifying session might pan out.

AJ Allmendinger (Forsythe) got his weekend back on track after crashing out of Friday's qualifying session with fourth fastest time, albeit some 0.6 seconds off his team-mate.

But the surprises of the session were the Britons Dan Clarke (CTE Racing-HVM) and Katherine Legge (PKV Racing) who filled fifth and sixth spots, not only beating their team-mates Nelson Philippe and Oriol Servia respectively, but also heading established stars such as Cristiano da Matta and Bruno Junqueira.

Despite his potentially horrendous crash yesterday, Will Power's confidence seems to be back on track, with 10th fastest time, but his Team Australia team-mate Alex Tagliani struggled for much of the session. Inexplicably unable to match his times from last year, Alex did appear to find a set-up that suited him in the final two minutes of the session to set his fastest time, still a quarter-second off Power.

Practice times:

Pos  Driver              Team                Time
 1.  Paul Tracy          Forsythe          58.811
 2.  Justin Wilson       RuSPORT           59.163  + 0.352
 3.  Sebastien Bourdais  Newman/Haas       59.314  + 0.503
 4.  AJ Allmendinger     Forsythe          59.424  + 0.613
 5.  Dan Clarke          CTE-HVM           59.665  + 0.854
 6.  Katherine Legge     PKV               59.824  + 1.013
 7.  Nelson Philippe     CTE-HVM           59.840  + 1.029
 8.  Oriol Servia        PKV               59.870  + 1.059
 9.  Cristiano da Matta  RuSPORT           59.912  + 1.101
10.  Will Power          Team Australia  1:00.215  + 1.404
11.  Bruno Junqueira     Newman/Haas     1:00.241  + 1.430
12.  Andrew Ranger       Conquest        1:00.253  + 1.442
13.  Alex Tagliani       Team Australia  1:00.462  + 1.651
14.  Mario Dominguez     Dale Coyne      1:00.670  + 1.859
15.  Jan Heylen          Dale Coyne      1:00.867  + 2.056
16.  Charles Zwolsman    Conquest        1:00.902  + 2.091
17.  Tonis Kasemets      Rocketsports    1:01.905  + 3.094
18.  Nicky Pastorelli    Rocketsports    1:01.940  + 3.129