Tracy takes provisional pole

Tracy, with a quick lap of 92.700s [108.544 mph], was followed by Michael Andretti, Juan Montoya, Bryan Herta and Dario Franchitti.

Tracy's run is nearly one half seconds off the track record held by Franchitti, but with another full day of practice and qualifying it is possible that the record won't stand throughout the weekend.

The day started off with damp skies at the street course of Surfers Paradise.

Christian Fittipaldi was the fastest man in this morning's practice session.

But the skies cleared for the afternoon qualifying session and the qualifying runs were several seconds faster than the morning practice times.

Qualifying was broken up into two sessions with the fastest drivers from Houston taking to the track first.

Tracy's team-mate Dario Franchitti was the first and fastest man on the track but not for long as the other drivers started turning in laps.

Tracy quickly put in a very fast lap which held for several minutes until being beaten by Franchitti.

Juan Montoya, Bryan Herta, Michael Andretti, Tony Kanaan and Gil de Ferran threatened to grab the pole from Franchitti but it was Tracy who eventually turned in the fastest lap of the group.

Minutes later the slower drivers took to the track and Patrick Carpentier was the early man to beat in that group, but his time was much slower than the leaders in group one.

Jimmy Vasser and then Mauricio Gugelmin were the next drivers to lead the session with Gugelmin eventually the fastest of the group with a lap of 94.109s [106.919mph].

That put him in eighth place on the provisional starting grid.

The big story of the weekend continues to be the race to the championship between Montoya and Franchitti.

Montoya leads the points battle by only 13 points with 22 available this weekend and another 22 available at the season finale in Fontana, California in two weeks.

It is the first drive here for rookie Montoya but with six wins to his credit on tracks he's
never raced, Franchiti has no distinct advantage over Montoya here.

Should Montoya win it all this weekend, he will be only the second driver in CART history to win the championship in his rookie year.

Final qualifying takes place tomorrow afternoon with the start of the Honda Indy 300 scheduled for 2:00 local time on Sunday.

First qualifying times: