Servia takes Surfers provisional pole

The Catalan, who was dumped by Forsythe Championship Racing after the previous round at Assen, is this weekend standing in for Tristan Gommendy at PKV Racing, the team for whom he drove last year.

As the whole pack flooded onto the circuit following a red flag period for Alex Tagliani's spun Rocketsports car, Servia nailed a 1:30.862 lap to edge Power of Team Australia by just 0.033 seconds.

Power was a tenth up on one of his earlier flying laps when he had a half spin, and so he believes he has more time in the car to take pole tomorrow. The Australian was surprisingly almost half a second quicker than Justin Wilson of RuSPORT, who had topped the timesheets in morning practice and in the 15 minute pre-qualifying session.

The Briton explained: "This morning went very well, the car was working very good, and the same was true of the session before qualifying. In fact I'd say the time came really easy. But in qualifying proper it didn't quite feel quite so good."

Wilson added: "We need longer runs to get enough heat in the tyres, so that last lap was just wild. I don't know what the problem is. But give it six or seven lap runs and we're very good, so I'd say we're in a good position for the weekend as a whole."

Forsythe's Paul Tracy wound up fourth fastest, albeit a second slower than Servia, but like most others only completed eight laps and believes this cost him a top three slot. This was, however, two more laps than Sebastien Bourdais, who smashed his Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing car into the Turn 1 wall mid-session and had his fastest time deleted.

The champion elect said afterwards: "I suppose this is my corner. That's the third time I've crashed there in five years coming here. It's a shame for the boys who have to fix it, because I think our times showed it was a pretty good car. At least Justin [Wilson, his only championship rival] didn't get the point for provisional pole."

The second PKV Racing entry of Neel Jani clocked up 11 laps, and the Swiss driver was top of the rookies, edging out Minardi Team USA's Robert Doornbos for fifth.

An unexpected moment of comedy for all but those involved came on the final flying lap when Mario Dominguez rammed his Pacific Coast Motorsports machine into compatriot David Martinez's Forsythe entry as they braked for the final turn.

Pos  Driver           Team                   Time
 1.  Oriol Servia     PKV Racing             1:30.862
 2.  Will Power       Team Australia         1:30.895 +    0.033
 3.  Justin Wilson    RuSPORT                1:31.365 +    0.503
 4.  Paul Tracy       Forsythe Championship  1:31.820 +    0.958
 5.  Neel Jani        PKV Racing             1:32.520 +    1.658
 6.  Robert Doornbos  Minardi Team USA       1:32.675 +    1.813
 7.  Bruno Junqueira  Dale Coyne Racing      1:32.875 +    2.013
 8.  S.Bourdais       Newman/Haas/Lanigan    1:32.883 +    2.021
 9.  Simon Pagenaud   Team Australia         1:33.018 +    2.156
10.  Nelson Philippe  Conquest Racing        1:33.187 +    2.325
11.  Dan Clarke       Minardi Team USA       1:33.866 +    3.004
12.  Katherine Legge  Dale Coyne Racing      1:33.986 +    3.124
13.  Graham Rahal     Newman/Haas/Lanigan    1:34.049 +    3.187
14.  David Martinez   Forsythe Championship  1:35.578 +    4.716
15.  Alex Figge       Pacific Coast          1:44.381 +   13.519
16.  Alex Tagliani    Rocketsports Racing    3:20.825 + 1:49.963
17.  Mario Dominguez  Pacific Coast          4:27.161 + 2:56.299