Prov. Pole: Sebastien Bourdais 59.895 / 118.588 mph
source: champcarworldseries.com3rd: Bruno Junqueira 100.085 / 118.213 mph
Sebastien Bourdais, No. 1 McDonald's Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone: "We came here with a completely different setup on the McDonald's car from last year and so far it's working pretty well. I think it was a pretty big surprise to be able to bring the cars first and third fastest in the qualifying. Last year obviously the team struggled quite a bit with the speed. The Newman/Haas team did a pretty good effort to try and come up with something different, which we did. It's not ideal yet, but we're still working on a few different changes. I think we'll get it right; it's just a matter of trying to get some testing. Obviously, this morning was a pretty short session with all the red flags. We didn't make as much progress as we would have liked to. In the end, we're pretty happy with the way things went in this qualifying session. It's good to get this point and this front row start. We'll try and get it better to keep A.J. behind us. It's always a fundamental thing. You need to start to the front if you want to ease your day a little bit for Sunday. It's one of the nicest things of the Friday. There's only one spot that you really want. The rest you know you'll have to do it again all over next day on Saturday. No, I think it's perfect the way it played out, especially with A.J. making a mistake like that. Maybe he's going to break a little bit his momentum. We could use some of that, for sure. But, you know, I'm sure he'll be back tomorrow. We'll have a tough fight in our hands. We're not shooting for starting second; we're trying to get the pole.
"Well, I think the Bridgestone tires are always good, even if they're only standards. But the fact that Paul got stuck in traffic and didn't get pole using the reds is a good thing for us. We'll have two sets tomorrow. We'll try and get the best out of it. The team did a very good job at putting me in clean air. There was only Nelson (Philippe) that was in front of me. He had some time to slow down. Let him completely go, I was free of traffic. That was perfect. I had a lot of clean laps, like three or four in the end. I kept on clicking the same lap times, but in completely different fashion. I'm pretty sure there's some good lap time in the car. As Paul said, it was extremely hard and very unforgiving. I made a few different mistakes. So far, you know, I think the car is just a little too hard to drive to really get the best out of it. That's what we'll focus on tomorrow, trying to get it a little closer and a little easier to drive, because otherwise it's going to be a real struggle for the race.
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