Wilson beats Bourdais to Mexico pole

The British RuSPORT driver nailed his top lap of 1:24.801 (117.763mph) with a few minutes to go, but nothing his Newman/Haas Racing rival did could dislodge Wilson.

"Everything came together at the right time," Wilson commented. "We made some changes before qualifying that improved the car, a lot. I could get on the power earlier, everything was flowing."

Regarding the wrist fracture incurred at Surfers Paradise, he added: "It made a difference to my time yesterday, because I was losing time in the Esses and through the final corner.

"Today I don't know if it cost me a tenth, two tenths or nothing at all. I feel confident I'll be able to handle 66 laps tomorrow, and go for the win. If I can't, I'll play it smart and try and get second in the championship."

Wilson needs only to finish seventh tomorrow to grab runner-up slot in the title race from new NASCAR driver AJ Allmendinger.

Bourdais admitted to being "a little disappointed" to lose pole. "After the first run, I thought I'd be on pole," he said. "I came in and we made a change to counteract the understeer that we get here as more rubber goes down.

"However, we aren't sure why, but we still had pretty bad understeer, and together with the oil going down we came up a little short. Maybe we had a rear damper problem, I don't know."

As Will Power was one of the few drivers who failed to improve his time from Friday, the Team Australia driver was edged aside by the second Newman/Haas car of Bruno Junqueira, who was half a second off Bourdais.

Ryan Briscoe took fifth in the second RuSPORT entry and will start alongside Dan Clarke, who did a great job on his first visit to the track by taking sixth place for CTE Racing-HVM.

David Martinez of Forsythe Championship Racing stole local hero status with ninth place, two ahead of Mario Dominguez in the Rocketsports entry.

Pos  Driver            Team                   Time
 1.  Justin Wilson     RuSPORT                1:24.801
 2.  S.Bourdais        Newman/Haas            1:24.986 + 0.185
 3.  Bruno Junqueira   Newman/Haas            1:25.491 + 0.690
 4.  Will Power        Team Australia         1:25.624 + 0.823
 5.  Ryan Briscoe      RuSPORT                1:25.643 + 0.842
 6.  Dan Clarke        CTE HVM                1:25.942 + 1.141
 7.  Oriol Servia      PKV                    1:26.068 + 1.267
 8.  Alex Tagliani     Team Australia         1:26.087 + 1.286
 9.  David Martinez    Forsythe Championship  1:26.146 + 1.345
10.  Nelson Philippe   CTE HVM                1:26.278 + 1.477
11.  Mario Dominguez   Rocketsports           1:26.450 + 1.649
12.  Charles Zwolsman  Mi-Jack Conquest       1:26.480 + 1.679
13.  Katherine Legge   PKV                    1:26.607 + 1.806
14.  Buddy Rice        Forsythe Championship  1:26.736 + 1.935
15.  Antonio Pizzonia  Rocketsports           1:26.948 + 2.147
16.  Andrew Ranger     Mi-Jack Conquest       1:27.089 + 2.288
17.  Jan Heylen        Dale Coyne             1:27.214 + 2.413
18.  Andreas Wirth     Dale Coyne             1:27.842 + 3.041