Bourdais fastest in damp practice...qualifying next!

source: cart.com

The Newman/Haas and Player's/Forsythe teams continued to dominate the action at Toronto's Exhibition Place. Sebastien Bourdais led the Saturday morning practice by producing a 59.593 second (106.019 mph) lap right at the end of the 75-minute session. That was almost half a second faster than Patrick Carpentier.

Occasional sprinkles made for a slippery track during portions of the Saturday morning session, but conditions remained mostly dry and the session was incident-free. Mario Haberfeld of Mi-Jack/Conquest Racing had the closest call, executing a 360-degree spin without hitting anything at the 130-mph Turn 11.

Friday pole-winner Bruno Junqueira sat out most of the session, emerging from the pits with ten minutes to go to set the fifth best time of the session. Bourdais, who admitted to struggling on Friday at a difficult track that is new to him, led most of the session with a 60.1second lap until Carpentier ran a 60.002 in the last five minutes. Sebastien pushed hard through the end of the session, and his 43rd and final lap did the trick.

Alex Tagliani also improved on his final lap to run third at 60.173 seconds, while Jimmy Vasser was an encouraging fourth fastest on 60.352s in the American Spirit Reynard.

The other Reynards were in terrible shape. Vasser's teammate Ryan Hunter-Reay was 11th fastest, but Darren Manning, Tiago Monteiro, Haberfeld and Rodolfo Lavin occupied positions 14 through 17, leading only the Dale Coyne Lolas.

Overnight polesitter Bruno Junqueira was fifth quick, championship contender Michel Jourdain was sixth quick despite only running 13 laps (compared to 43 for Bourdais), and series leader Paul Tracy suffered gearbox problems which ruled him out of the second, and faster, half of the session.

We will have LIVE audio, as well as timing and scoring direct from qualifying. We'll also have all the news and quotes from the paddock after the session, so keep coming back for the latest from us here in Toronto. Join us here at 1:45pm ET for the build up, and catch qualifying LIVE on Speed TV from 1:30pm ET.

Click HERE for morning session times from Toronto.