LONG BEACH - Sitting in his car watching a wet track rapidly drying as the sand slipped through the qualifying hourglass, Bruno Junqueira (#6 PacifiCare Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) was secure in the knowledge that he would start Sunday’s Bridgestone Presents The Champ Car World Series Powered by Ford season opener in the front row.
He earned that security by leading Friday’s first-round of qualifying, guaranteeing himself a front-row spot for Sunday’s Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach. That security ended there however as Junqueira had to sit back and watch the track dry and the times of his pursuers drop as he and his Newman/Haas team debated on when to allow the provisional polesitter to join the fray.
Eventually the margin between the field and Junqueira’s Friday time of 1:08.913 would narrow enough to force Junqueira on the track, but a spate of late-session red flags would keep the pack at bay as Junqueira’s first-round effort held up for the Brazilian’s eighth career Champ Car pole. He will pace an all Newman/Haas Racing front row for Sunday’s race as Sebastien Bourdais (#2 McDonald’s Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) earned a starting position on the outside of Row One with a time of 1:09.800 (101.501 mph).
Bourdais had only one shot to vault to the second spot and made good on the chance, using his final lap around the 1.968-mile street course to displace defending Long Beach winner Paul Tracy (#1 Indeck Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) from the second position. Tracy held the fastest time of the day , carding his top effort of 1:10.196 (100.929 mph) with nine minutes in the session, and appeared to have caught a break when his teammate Patrick Carpentier (#7 Indeck Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) brought out a red flag with a trip into the Turn Nine tires.
But the vaunted Champ Car Safety Team got the situation fixed in time for the field to get one more green flag lap in, and Bourdais used it to his advantage as he ripped past the timing line with the checkered flag in the air, displacing Tracy and moving into the second spot. The run sets up a 1-2 Newman/Haas front row, the same way the two teammates started the final race of the 2003 season in Australia.
Tracy would fall back to third on a day where very little else changed in the top of the order from Friday’s first round of qualifying. Tracy’s move back to third would drop each of Friday’s top eight drivers back one spot, putting Alex Tagliani (#8 Johnson Controls Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) alongside Tracy in the second row. The third row will be an all-Herdez affair, with Mario Dominguez (#55 Herdez Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) equaling a career-best with a fifth-place run while his new teammate Ryan Hunter-Reay (#4 Herdez Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) will start in the sixth position.
Carpentier lost his fastest lap of Saturday’s session by causing one of the late red flags, but his Friday time was more than enough to hold him in the seventh spot, alongside rookie A.J. Allmendinger (#10 RuSPORT Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone). Allmendinger’s Friday time of 1:09.905 (101.349 mph) makes the Californian the highest-starting rookie in the event.
Carpentier’s new teammate will start directly behind him as Rodolfo Lavin (#3 Corona Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) locked down the ninth spot on the grid. Veteran Jimmy Vasser (#12 Gulfstream Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) rounds out the top 10 on the grid after posting a time of 1:10.056 (101.131 mph) on Friday.
There was a shuffling in the middle of the pack, coming well after most of the fans had left the Long Beach streets for the day. Oriol Servia (#11 YokeTV.com Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) ended up vaulting to 12th place after stewards determined that they had inadvertently failed to count his final lap of qualifying.
The discrepancy came as the #11 car of Servia passed the timing and scoring line, which is located at the beginning the frontstraight, before taking the checkered flag to end the session. He completed one more timed lap as per the instructions the driver received in the pre-race meeting, but the lap was disallowed initially by Champ Car stewards. After reviewing the situation, the stewards reinstated Servia’s lap, moving him into 12th place in the starting order for Sunday’s race.
That move would alter the starting positions of Michel Jourdain Jr. (#9 Gigante Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone), Mario Haberfeld (#5 Cummins Ford-Cosworth/Reynard/Bridgestone), Alex Sperafico (#14 Mi-Jack Ford-Cosworth/Reynard/Bridgestone), Nelson Philippe (#17 Lease Plan Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) and Roberto Gonzalez (#21 NII Holdings Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone), who will start 13th through 17th respectively.
The Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach will get underway Sunday afternoon at 4 p.m. Eastern Time. The 81-lap event can be seen live on Spike TV and HDNet. Fans can also follow along with the new Race Director feature on the official website of the series, www.champcarworldseries.com.
Quotes From The Top Three Qualifiers
BRUNO JUNQUEIRA: I feel really good. I think that's the best way to start the season. PacifiCare and Newman/Haas team did a good job over the winter. And you can see both Newman/Haas cars on the front row, I think that's very good for the team. Let's look forward to the race tomorrow.
SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: Looking at the conditions we've been facing this morning, I was expecting a wet session. I felt pretty comfortable that I could get some good results, and that is what I have right now. I'm just glad the car is up to speed at the right time. It's not been a completely clean lap, but for sure, it was a real fight in the car and it just worked. I'm really okay with that.
PAUL TRACY: It's the same for everybody. It was a little bit of a panicked qualifying session with the weather today. With 11 or 12 minutes of running, we ran one set of tires and tried to do a second run on the same set of tires and it didn't play out for us. I'm happy with third. It's a long race tomorrow. So we'll just try to get the car ready for the race.
