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Servia fastest in Saturday practice

It took a few trips down escape roads, tripping over kerbs and dodging traffic, but Oriol Servia reasserted himself at the top of the timing screens in Saturday morning's practice session at Surfers Paradise

The Catalan driver, subbing for the financially troubled Tristan Gommendy at PKV Racing, stopped the clocks at 1:31.225, an average speed of 110.299 mph around the 2.795-mile street course.

Local hero Will Power threw everything he had at his rival with his final flyer, but the Team Australia pilot came up a frustrating 0.004 seconds short.

Meanwhile Justin Wilson, who had languished mid-table for most of the session, launched a spectacular effort in the last minute to wind up just a few hundredths shy of the men who beat his RuSPORT car to the front row yesterday.

Sebastien Bourdais was 0.33 seconds off Servia, but after having his brakes changed this morning looks a likely pole challenger come final qualifying, the Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing team having done a superb job to rebuild his wreck from yesterday.

As in yesterday morning's practice, Mario Dominguez made a superb effort for Pacific Coast Motorsports to clock fifth fastest, ahead of the second Team Australia machine of Simon Pagenaud.

The 2006 Atlantic champion was fastest of the rookies, but Graham Rahal in the second Newman/Haas/Lanigan machine was ninth, just 0.15 behind.

In fact, the rookies that excelled in qualifying yesterday - Neel Jani (PKV) and Robert Doornbos (Minardi Team USA) - slipped backwards this morning to 12th and 16th respectively, each comprehensively outperformed by their more experienced teammates.

Dan Clarke in the second Minardi car got up to eighth, overcoming his hampered running yesterday when he suffered transmission problems.

Paul Tracy was only 11th fastest this morning, but given that his fourth fastest time yesterday was set on blacks, and unlike many of his fellow competitors, he thus has two sets of red-walled 'soft' tyres to use, he is expected to be a challenger for a top-four grid slot.

Pos  Driver             Team                       Time
 1.  Oriol Servia       PKV Racing                 1:31.225
 2.  Will Power         Team Australia             1:31.229 + 0.004
 3.  Justin Wilson      RuSPORT                    1:31.308 + 0.083
 4.  S. Bourdais        Newman/Haas/Lanigan        1:31.531 + 0.306
 5.  Mario Dominguez    Pacific Coast              1:31.949 + 0.724
 6.  Simon Pagenaud     Team Australia             1:32.288 + 1.063
 7.  Bruno Junqueira    Dale Coyne Racing          1:32.291 + 1.066
 8.  Dan Clarke         Minardi Team USA           1:32.380 + 1.155
 9.  Graham Rahal       Newman/Haas/Lanigan        1:32.415 + 1.190
10.  Alex Tagliani      Rocketsports Racing        1:32.632 + 1.407
11.  Paul Tracy         Forsythe Championship      1:32.759 + 1.534
12.  Neel Jani          PKV Racing                 1:33.069 + 1.844
13.  Katherine Legge    Dale Coyne Racing          1:33.272 + 2.047
14.  Nelson Philippe    Conquest Racing            1:33.319 + 2.094
15.  Alex Figge         Pacific Coast              1:33.519 + 2.294
16.  Robert Doornbos    Minardi Team USA           1:33.789 + 2.564
17.  David Martinez     Forsythe Championship      1:34.652 + 3.427

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