Lehto on pole again at Portland

It is his second pole in two weekends in the premier North American sportscar racing series.

Lehto hussled the BMW V12 LMR he shares with Steve Soper around the narrow Portland circuit in just 1m4.387s - more than three-tenths of a second faster than second-placed Johnny O'Connell in the number two Panoz LMP Roadster S he shares with Jan Magnussen.

'It was quite slippery out there this afternoon,' said Lehto after the faster second qualifying session.

'This is a short circuit and there is not much grip. But most of the slower cars came out at once and it was hard to get a clear lap.'

Third place went to the David Brabham/Eric Bernard Panoz, which was just two hundredths of a second off its sister car.

Fourth was held by the Rafanelli Riley & Scott-Judd driven by Mimo Schiattarella and Eric Comas.

The GTS class was again dominated by the ORECA-prepared Dodge Vipers.

Tommy Archer piloted the car he shares with Karl Wendlinger to the class pole with a time of 1m11.913s.

The GT pole is held by Dirk Muller in a Porsche 911 GT3. Muller's was the only pole time that stood from the first of the two qualifying sessions.