Bourdais and Wilson shine in Q1

Their teams messed around with each other on tyre strategy, but in the end the battle for provisional came down to a straight battle between the drivers, and in the end it was the Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing driver who had the edge, and did the job in just six laps, compared to the RuSPORT pilot's eight.

Bourdais commented: "It was great, the car was competitive right off the truck. I made a couple of mistakes on my second run, using the option [reds] so I think we could have been quicker."

Wilson too admitted that he had goofed a couple of corners when his tyres were at their best, but he pressed on through and was reasonably content with his time.

Team Australia had reason for encouragement as Will Power was third fastest, half a second behind despite running the harder compound black-walled tyres.

"Based on previous experience, I'd say that reds make between half and a full second difference here," Power remarked. "We just didn't use them today because we didn't think we'd be that close."

The Australian, who removed his hand-brace for qualifying, hurt his wrist some more when he had a minor off-track excursion, but he is expected to get a modified brace for tomorrow.

Oriol Servia was fourth fastest for PKV Racing, ahead of Graham Rahal who showed great improvement over this morning's practice, but remained 1.2 seconds off Newman/Haas/Lanigan team-mate Bourdais. Nonetheless, this was enough to put him ahead of Team Australia's Simon Pagenaud as top rookie.

Star of the session was David Martinez who used a set of red tyres to grab seventh, 0.06 seconds ahead of Forsythe Championship Racing teammate Paul Tracy who stayed on blacks.

Nonetheless, it was a great performance from Martinez in only his third Champ Car start, heading compatriot Mario Dominguez who also used reds to clock 10th fastest for Pacific Coast Motorsports.

Notable below par performances came from series veterans Bruno Junqueira and Alex Tagliani. Junqueira had problems with the gearing in his Dale Coyne Racing machine this morning, and the changes made for this afternoon were unsatisfactory, restricting his top speed.

Tagliani, meanwhile, was unhappy about the oversteer in his car in the 15-minute pre-qualifying session, and he too felt the changes took the car in the wrong direction.

Pos  Driver           Team                          Time
 1.  S.Bourdais       Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing    1:24.698
 2.  Justin Wilson    RuSPORT                       1:24.825 + 0.127
 3.  Will Power       Team Australia                1:25.199 + 0.501
 4.  Oriol Servia     PKV Racing                    1:25.436 + 0.738
 5.  Simon Pagenaud   Team Australia                1:25.952 + 1.254
 6.  David Martinez   Forsythe Championship Racing  1:26.056 + 1.358
 7.  Paul Tracy       Forsythe Championship Racing  1:26.130 + 1.432
 8.  Neel Jani        PKV Racing                    1:26.156 + 1.458
 9.  Graham Rahal     Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing    1:26.156 + 1.458
10.  Mario Dominguez  Pacific Coast Motorsports     1:26.181 + 1.483
11.  Bruno Junqueira  Dale Coyne Racing             1:26.190 + 1.492
12.  Robert Doornbos  Minardi Team USA              1:26.220 + 1.522
13.  Dan Clarke       Minardi Team USA              1:26.617 + 1.919
14.  Nelson Philippe  Conquest Racing               1:26.964 + 2.266
15.  Alex Figge       Pacific Coast Motorsports     1:27.230 + 2.532
16.  Alex Tagliani    Rocketsports Racing           1:27.277 + 2.579
17.  Katherine Legge  Dale Coyne Racing             1:28.280 + 3.582