Solid performance by Patrick on day one... Mexico City, Mexico - Patrick Carpentier of Team Player's powered his way up the leader board on his last flying lap of the day on Friday to post the sixth fastest time in the first qualifying session for Sunday's Grand Prix Telmex-Gigante, the final race of the 2002 FedEx CART Championship. Team Player's driver Alex Tagliani, who found himself in heavy traffic on a number of his hot laps, clocked the 14th quickest lap on the 2.786-mile road course at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez. Brazil's Bruno Junqueira, the only driver to record a time under 1 minute, 26 seconds (1:25.941) took the provisional pole and the accompanying bonus point to extend his second-place lead over Carpentier in the drivers' standings to four points. Until his dramatic last lap of 1:26.904 (115.410 mph / 185.734 km/h), Carpentier seemed destined to finish well back of the leaders. But racing flat out on the challenging and, in places, snaky and bumpy course, Carpentier shaved more than 6 tenths of a second off his best previous run of the qualifying session. His fast lap was also a marked improvement of 2.5 seconds over his best performance in morning practice. "I know that a lot of other teams improved their times from this morning, but most of them were in the 2-second range," said Carpentier. "I'm very pleased to end up in sixth, considering where I was going into that final lap. With Bruno getting that extra point for the pole, it makes it a bit tighter to catch him for second place. It's going to be tough but I think I can do it. I'll try to take the pole from him in Saturday's final qualifying."
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