Bourdais on provisional San Jose pole

The Frenchman lapped the 1.443-mile course in 49.509 seconds, at an average speed of 104.926mph, to put himself 0.238 seconds clear of the field. Up until that moment, he had been languishing in 15th place.

"On my first run I spent more time down escape roads than I did on the track," Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing driver said.

"On the second, I kept getting people going down escape roads in front of me or backing up into me. Then finally everything came together - I don't know how - and we were able to get our lap in."

He did add that he - as with every driver - has a braking issue. In the 15-minute pre-qualifying session, there were over 10 incidents of cars disappearing up the escape road at Turn 6, and on one occasion there was the slightly farcical sight of three cars up there at the same time.

Justin Wilson, who made one trip into the Turn 6 run-off, was second fastest. The Briton was delighted that this is the first of his three races at San Jose in which he has had good traction out of corners.

Wilson attributed this to the DP01 chassis, but he was slightly bemused by the fact that the handling of his RSPORTS car deteriorated in the second half of the session.

The Briton said: "On my first run, I had no dashboard readouts, so I only knew what my lap times were when the team radioed me.

"We made hardly any changes when we went back out, but then suddenly the car was bouncing all over the bumps in the braking zones. I'm not sure what happened there."

Third place qualifier Will Power believed he had a couple of tenths he could have found, but he made errors and had cars backing up towards him, trying to get clear runs on this tight and short circuit.

Bruno Junqueira (Dale Coyne Racing) and Alex Tagliani (RSPORTS) set identical times, although the latter ran the soft-compound Bridgestones. Robert Doornbos was next, finding his quickest time on his penultimate lap in the Minardi Team USA car.

Despite the bumpiness of the course, Tristan Gommendy overcame the discomfort from his fractured rib and his sore back to clock ninth fastest time, less than half a second from compatriot Bourdais. However, his PKV Racing team-mate Neel Jani wound up last.

Graham Rahal struck a wall exiting Turn 2 after seven laps, ending his session early.

Pos Driver            Team                         Time    
 1. S.Bourdais        Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing   49.509
 2. Justin Wilson     RSPORTS                      49.747  + 0.238
 3. Will Power        Team Australia               49.822  + 0.313
 4. Bruno Junqueira   Dale Coyne Racing            49.852  + 0.343
 5. Alex Tagliani     RSPORTS                      49.852  + 0.343
 6. Robert Doornbos   Minardi Team USA             49.918  + 0.409
 7. Oriol Servia      Forsythe                     49.936  + 0.427
 8. Simon Pagenaud    Team Australia               49.944  + 0.435
 9. Tristan Gommendy  PKV Racing                   49.981  + 0.472
10. Dan Clarke        Minardi Team USA             50.029  + 0.520
11. Paul Tracy        Forsythe                     50.079  + 0.570
12. Jan Heylen        Conquest Racing              50.110  + 0.601
13. Graham Rahal      Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing   50.217  + 0.708
14. Mario Dominguez   Pacific Coast Motorsports    50.318  + 0.809
15. Katherine Legge   Dale Coyne Racing            50.531  + 1.022
16. Alex Figge        Pacific Coast Motorsports    50.606  + 1.097
17. Neel Jani         PKV Racing                   50.631  + 1.122