Paul Tracy and Patrick Carpentier will be at the front of
the field for the Champ Car World Series first night road-course race in its
history Saturday evening after the two Team Player's drivers qualified on Row 1
and 2 respectively for the 115-lap event
source: Team Players
Tracy, the provisional pole sitter, had a spin that brought out a red flag early
in the final qualifying session Friday night, an incident that would have cost
him his fastest time of the session. Combined with the fact that Tracy had
already locked up a front-row position, Team Player's decided to have him remain
in pit lane and save an extra set of tires.
As the qualifying session developed, Tracy managed to hold on to the pole until
French rookie Sebastien Bourdais, with four minutes left, turned a fast lap of
58.365 seconds 4 one-hundredths better than Tracy's provisional clocking.
Bourdais, who earned his fourth pole of the year, lowered it to 58.014 seconds
on his next hot lap.
Carpentier, who had woes of his own in the same turn 4-5 area of the
dust-slickened, 2.1-mile airport runway surface, had slipped to eighth on the
grid before a tightrope-like performance (58.449 seconds, 129.713 mph / 208.752
km/h) on his final hot lap vaulted him to P3. Fellow Canadian Alex Tagliani had
the seventh-fastest qualifying run and will start from the inside of Row 4.
While Tracy acknowledged that he would have liked to garner his third pole of
the season, he added: "Team Player's did what it had to do on the first day
of qualifying and we will start on the front row. When we got red-flagged, it
took away our best time of the session, so I needed two good laps to stay on
top. We opted to save our second set of tires. We were careful not to abuse our
tires, and so far that strategy has worked to our advantage this season."