Bourdais tops Portland practice

Not surprisingly, Sebastien Bourdais and Graham Rahal made a 1-2 for Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing, the reigning champion clocking a lap of 58.494 seconds, at an average speed of 120.874mph. However, his American teammate wound up just 0.014 seconds slower.

The story of the session, though, was Paul Tracy's return to action, which lasted less than two laps before he hit the wall.

Having completed an installation lap, he and Bourdais waited for 40 minutes before going back out on the course, but while his nemesis quickly found his way to the top of the timing screens, Tracy found concrete, the car snapping out of line in the gently curving Turn 8.

The collision with the wall shoved the Forsythe Championship Racing car's right front wheel back into the sidepod, which means Tracy will have to qualify this afternoon in his back-up car. Oriol Servia, in the second Forsythe machine, was 11th quickest.

Justin Wilson was in top form at a circuit where he scored his first Champ Car pole in 2005. The Briton got within 0.035 seconds of Bourdais to put his RSPORT entry third quickest, ahead of the Minardi USA car of Robert Doornbos.

The second Minardi car of Dan Clarke was seventh, 0.2 seconds off his Dutch teammate.

Neel Jani and Tristan Gommendy were fifth and eighth respectively for PKV Racing, but Gommendy ended the session on the grass in Turn 7.

Former PKV driver Katherine Legge did not set a time after the electrics in her Dale Coyne Racing entry burnt out.

Alex Figge, who missed Houston after hurting his back in Long Beach, clocked up 31 laps in his Pacific Coast Motorsports car, while Jan Heylen put his Conquest Racing entry 13th fastest.

Given that this was Heylen's first proper session in a DP01 Cosworth, the Belgian did an excellent job to turn a lap just 1.2 seconds off Bourdais.

Pos  Driver              Team                       Time
 1.  Sebastien Bourdais  Newman Haas Lanigan          58.494
 2.  Graham Rahal        Newman Haas Lanigan          58.508 +  0.014
 3.  Justin Wilson       RSPORTS                      58.529 +  0.035
 4.  Robert Doornbos     Minardi Team USA             58.635 +  0.141
 5.  Neel Jani           PKV                          58.704 +  0.210
 6.  Will Power          Team Australia               58.806 +  0.312
 7.  Dan Clarke          Minardi Team USA             58.834 +  0.340
 8.  Tristan Gommendy    PKV                          59.033 +  0.539
 9.  Simon Pagenaud      Team Australia               59.045 +  0.551
10.  Alex Tagliani       RSPORTS                      59.110 +  0.616
11.  Oriol Servia        Forsythe Championship        59.264 +  0.770
12.  Bruno Junqueira     Dale Coyne                   59.688 +  1.194
13.  Jan Heylen          Conquest                     59.694 +  1.200
14.  Alex Figge          Pacific Coast Motorsports  1:00.081 +  1.587
15.  Ryan Dalziel        Pacific Coast Motorsports  1:00.700 +  2.206
16.  Katherine Legge     Dale Coyne                 1:29.401 + 30.907
17.  Paul Tracy          Forsythe Championship      No Time