Excellent positions on the first grid of 2003 for Team Player's
source: Team Player's
St. Petersburg, Florida - Paul Tracy will start his first Champ Car
World Series race for Team Player's on the front row of the Grand Prix of St.
Petersburg grid on Sunday after clocking the second fastest lap in today's final
qualifying session on the 1.806-mile downtown street circuit. Tracy briefly held
the pole in today's session before relinquishing it to French rookie Sebastien
Bourdais, who had assured himself of at least a front-row position by taking the
provisional pole on Friday.
Adding to a productive day for Team Player's, Patrick Carpentier grabbed a spot
on the second row of the grid for the opening race of the Champ Car season when
he clocked the fourth quickest lap of today's qualifying session, which was run
under menacing skies and with blustery winds.
Bourdais, who registered his pole-winning time of 1 minute, .928 seconds just
after Tracy had shot to the top of the leader chart, became the first Champ Car
rookie to start from the pole in his first race since Nigel Mansell in 1993.
Tracy did his quickest lap in 1:01.476 (105.758 mph / 170.201 km/h), while
Carpentier, at 1:01.759 (105.274 mph / 169.422 km/h) was only 10 one-thousandths
of a second behind third-place finisher, Mexico's Adrian Fernandez. Canadian
Alex Tagliani will start from the 13th position.
"There was no rhythm to today's session because of all the red flags that
we had," said Tracy, who improved his starting position on the grid by
eight spots from Friday's session. "That made it hard to put two or three
laps together. It was really my first flying lap of the session when I got my
best time.