Wilson secures front row spot

Wilson and teammate AJ Allmendinger spent the closing period of the session in second and third behind reigning champion Sebastien Bourdais, but when RuSPORT elected to put Wilson on reds, the gamble paid off and he wound up 0.35 seconds quicker than the Newman/Haas driver.

"It didn't even feel like a good lap," said Wilson afterwards. "I think really I owe it to Bridgestone and their soft tyres rather than anything I did.

"When the red flags came out while I was trying to go for that run, I thought we'd blown our chance of going quickest and ruined a set of option tyres too. But when the track cleared we went straight back out, the tyres came up to temperature really quickly and we did it."

The red flags that Wilson referred to were caused by Dan Clarke going off the track. Hot on the heels of a run-in with British compatriot Katherine Legge of PKV Racing in this morning's practice, which led to him being forced by Champ Car to sit out half an hour of the session, Clarke had an incident in qualifying with Paul Tracy.

"Clarke blocked me for about two thirds of a lap," fumed Tracy afterwards. "My tyres were just coming into the zone, and I caught up with him, but every time I went to pass him he moved over to stop me. He just doesn't get it."

The Forsythe Championship Racing driver wound up fourth quickest, half a second off Bourdais on the same tyre compound. Clarke, meanwhile, was penalised his two quickest laps - one for causing the red flag (a standard penalty in Champ Car), and one for interfering with a driver's qualifying run.

Bruno Junqueira was fifth, but was left ruing a mistake on his first hot lap run, as the red flags ended his second. Conquest's decision to switch to red tyres resulted in Andrew Ranger and Charles Zwolsman taking sixth and ninth, separated by Alex Tagliani (Team Australia) and Oriol Servia (PKV Racing).

Pos  Driver              Team              Time
 1.  Justin Wilson       RuSPORT           1:14.305
 2.  Sebastien Bourdais  Newman/Haas       1:14.658  +  0.353
 3.  A.J. Allmendinger   RuSPORT           1:14.850  +  0.555
 4.  Paul Tracy          Forsythe          1:15.144  +  0.839
 5.  Bruno Junqueira     Newman/Haas       1:15.162  +  0.857
 6.  Andrew Ranger       Mi-Jack Conquest  1:15.438  +  1.133
 7.  Alex Tagliani       Team Australia    1:15.571  +  1.266
 8.  Oriol Servia        PKV Racing        1:15.731  +  1.426
 9.  Charles Zwolsman    Mi-Jack Conquest  1:15.842  +  1.537
10.  Cristiano da Matta  Dale Coyne        1:16.359  +  2.054
11.  Mario Dominguez     Forsythe          1:16.424  +  2.119
12.  Nelson Philippe     CTE - HVM         1:16.871  +  2.566
13.  Nicky Pastorelli    Rocketsports      1:16.954  +  2.649
14.  Will Power          Team Australia    1:17.180  +  2.875
15.  Dan Clarke          CTE - HVM         1:17.672  +  3.367
16.  Jan Heylen          Dale Coyne        1:18.003  +  3.698
17.  Katherine Legge     PKV               1:18.159  +  3.854