Tracy snatches San Jose pole

But the honour of being fastest in opening qualifying actually fell to Tracy's Forsythe teammate AJ Allmendinger, who lost his quickest lap as a penalty for causing a red flag earlier in the session.

Allmendinger had slithered into the Turn 7 run-off area and was unable to rejoin, forcing a stoppage. His car was undamaged and he grabbed the top spot from Tracy as the chequered flag fell, but already knew that he would have to forsake the place.

Nevertheless, Allmendinger's previous pace was still sufficient to secure third on the grid - rather better than his Friday form in the previous round at Edmonton, where he crashed early in first qualifying.

Tracy therefore earned the bonus point for Friday pole and secured a guaranteed front row start. He was a scant 0.004 seconds ahead of Bourdais, with Allmendinger also within 0.090 seconds.

Having led the way for much of practice, Oriol Servia continued his strong form by taking fourth, 0.002 seconds behind Allmendinger. The Spaniard looks set for his most competitive weekend since joining PKV Racing.

The impressive Dan Clarke completes the top five, the leading rookie two places ahead of his CTE-HVM teammate Nelson Philippe, who had been quickest in practice.

Edmonton winner Justin Wilson was only eighth on this occasion, while Will Power - so impressive a week ago - missed qualifying entirely after his practice crash.

Friday qualifying times:

Pos  Driver              Team              Time
 1.  Paul Tracy          Forsythe        50.156
 2.  Sebastien Bourdais  Newman/Haas     50.160  + 0.004
 3.  AJ Allmendinger     Forsythe        50.246  + 0.090
 4.  Oriol Servia        PKV             50.248  + 0.092
 5.  Dan Clarke          CTE-HVM         50.278  + 0.122
 6.  Alex Tagliani       Team Australia  50.373  + 0.217
 7.  Nelson Philippe     CTE-HVM         50.440  + 0.284
 8.  Justin Wilson       RuSPORT         50.504  + 0.348
 9.  Bruno Junqueira     Newman/Haas     50.587  + 0.431
10.  Cristiano da Matta  RuSPORT         50.734  + 0.578
11.  Mario Dominguez     Dale Coyne      50.861  + 0.705
12.  Andrew Ranger       Conquest        50.925  + 0.769
13.  Charles Zwolsman    Conquest        51.004  + 0.848
14.  Katherine Legge     PKV             51.329  + 1.173
15.  Jan Heylen          Dale Coyne      51.591  + 1.435
16.  Nicky Pastorelli    Rocketsports    52.344  + 2.488
17.  Will Power          Team Australia