Wilson grabs provisional pole

The RSPORTS driver was never headed once he put on his red-walled soft tyres, and only a late effort by Minardi USA's Robert Doornbos put anyone within a quarter of a second off the Briton.

"Everything went well," Wilson said. "I had a little bit of traffic to deal with, but the car was great. We didn't even have to touch the set ups as we switched from the hard to the soft tyres. We just came in, put on the reds and went. I reckon we've got more in reserve if we need it."

Doornbos was not particularly happy with his car, complaining of an up-shift problem with the semi-automatic gearbox, but he beat Sebastien Bourdais, whose late efforts were not enough to improve his third place.

The reigning champion was unhappy with the handling of his Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing car on red tyres as the track warmed up.

"I don't know what happened, but the car went from being acceptable to pretty bad," he said. "We also had a downshift issue on our first run.

"Then, like I say, it felt like the tyres weren't up to temperature. There was no grip. Perhaps it was a damper problem, but certainly something wasn't right."

Alex Tagliani completed a fine day for RSPORTS with fourth fastest time, albeit finishing 0.363 seconds off his teammate, but Team Australia disappointed with sixth and seventh, beaten by the PKV Racing entry of Tristan Gommendy.

Paul Tracy meanwhile could do no better than 13th fastest in his spare car, half a second off Forsythe Championship Racing teammate Oriol Servia, who nonetheless is still only 11th quickest.

Ryan Dalziel completed only four laps for Pacific Coast Motorsports, due to a suspected electronics problem.

Pos  Driver             Team                       Time
 1.  Justin Wilson      RSPORTS                      58.000
 2.  Robert Doornbos    Minardi Team USA             58.214 + 0.214
 3.  S.Bourdais         Newman/Haas/Lanigan          58.308 + 0.308
 4.  Alex Tagliani      RSPORTS                      58.363 + 0.363
 5.  Tristan Gommendy   PKV                          58.399 + 0.399
 6.  Simon Pagenaud     Team Australia               58.448 + 0.448
 7.  Will Power         Team Australia               58.469 + 0.469
 8.  Graham Rahal       Newman/Haas/Lanigan          58.639 + 0.639
 9.  Dan Clarke         Minardi Team USA             58.692 + 0.692
10.  Neel Jani          PKV                          58.805 + 0.805
11.  Oriol Servi?       Forsythe Championship        58.926 + 0.926
12.  Jan Heylen         Conquest                     59.181 + 1.181
13.  Paul Tracy         Forsythe Championship        59.418 + 1.418
14.  Bruno Junqueira    Dale Coyne                   59.696 + 1.696
15.  Alex Figge         Pacific Coast Motorsports    59.708 + 1.708
16.  Katherine Legge    Dale Coyne                 1:00.421 + 2.421
17.  Ryan Dalziel       Pacific Coast Motorsports  1:04.275 + 6.275