Wilson tops San Jose warm-up
Justin Wilson's strong form continued in San Jose when he topped the times in Sunday morning warm-up
The Briton's 14th lap out of his 26 total was enough to jump him ahead of the Team Australia cars of Simon Pagenaud and Will Power, who showed their disastrous qualifying positions of ninth and 12th respectively had nothing to do with their cars' performance.
Wilson's RSPORTS car lapped the 1.443-mile street course in 49.716 seconds, an average speed of 104.490 mph, over a quarter of a second up on fellow front-row starter Sebastien Bourdais.
Bourdais, in his Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing machine, finished the session in fourth. The reigning champion and winner of the last two races here was just 0.014 seconds faster than the second RSPORTS car of Alex Tagliani.
Robert Doornbos was sixth fastest, despite completing only 10 laps due to a clutch failure. It was a torrid session for Minardi Team USA as the championship aspirant's teammate Dan Clarke, who will start today's race from third on the grid, had his fuel pressure fail after just 13 laps.
Another team in trouble was Dale Coyne Racing. Katherine Legge said the grip levels on her car were very poor, while teammate Bruno Junqueira missed the opening half of the session due to a probable burn-out wiring harness.
Pos Driver Team Time 1. Justin Wilson RSPORTS 49.716 2. Simon Pagenaud Team Australia 49.769 + 0.053 3. Will Power Team Australia 49.860 + 0.144 4. S.Bourdais Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing 49.979 + 0.263 5. Alex Tagliani RSPORTS 49.993 + 0.277 6. Robert Doornbos Minardi Team USA 50.006 + 0.290 7. Oriol Servià Forsythe Championship Racing 50.086 + 0.370 8. Neel Jani PKV Racing 50.156 + 0.440 9. Mario Dominguez Pacific Coast Motorsports 50.179 + 0.463 10. Graham Rahal Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing 50.245 + 0.529 11. Tristan Gommendy PKV Racing 50.284 + 0.568 12. Paul Tracy Forsythe Championship Racing 50.354 + 0.638 13. Dan Clarke Minardi Team USA 50.418 + 0.702 14. Alex Figge Pacific Coast Motorsports 50.555 + 0.839 15. Bruno Junqueira Dale Coyne Racing 50.717 + 1.001 16. Jan Heylen Conquest Racing 50.834 + 1.118 17. Katherine Legge Dale Coyne Racing 50.969 + 1.253
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