Denver, Sep 01: With an assist from the weather, Bruno Junqueira earned his second consecutive pole Saturday for the CART Grand Prix of Denver.
Light rain dampened sections of the 1.65-mile street course for early qualifiers, creating a slick track. Rain then intensified, wiping out the qualifying attempt of the next-to-last driver, Adrian Fernandez.
That meant Junqueira, who won Friday's provisional pole and who would have been last to qualify on Saturday, didn't need to make an attempt, since none of Saturday's qualifiers bettered his fastest lap of 1 minute, 1.438 seconds (96.507 mph) — a track record set Friday.
Junqueira won last year's inaugural Grand Prix of Denver, leading wire-to-wire after winning the pole. Oriol Servia had the quickest lap on Saturday of 1:01.477 (96.446) and will start on the outside of the front row in Sunday's 106-lap race.
Rookie Sebastien Bourdais was second fastest on Saturday at 1:01.547 (96.336) and will start on the inside of the second row, alongside Fernandez, who qualified on the basis of his Friday time, 1:01.583 (96.280).



Starting position is critical. In CART's 14 races this season, the winner has started no worse than fourth. Junqueira earned his second pole of the season and seventh of his career.



"I don't think I was really lucky because, truthfully, the only guy who could beat me was Adrian, and Adrian and I were penalized by the rain," he said. "On the other hand, I was very lucky that Oriol or Sebastien or any other driver didn't beat my time because if they had beaten my time, I would not have had a chance to respond.



"Anyway, I am quite happy to get the pole and have a chance to repeat what I did here last year starting from the pole."



Paul Tracy, the season points leader who has won six races, was clocking the fastest lap of the week through six of nine turns before he spun out.



"You're pushing to the limit, you have one lap to do it, you're on cold tires and that was it," Tracy said. "You just try not to hit the wall. I was trying to get the most out of every corner, and I lost it."



Tracy, who has 192 points compared to Junqueira's 165, insisted there is "a long way to go in this championship yet. There's five races. That's a quarter of the season. So it's by no means over.



"We've got to outrace Newman Haas (Junqueira's team) and outrun them every weekend. This weekend we haven't been able to do that, but we're going to try to do that (Sunday)."



Fernandez went skidding on wet pavement at the end of the front straight, ending his qualifying attempt.



"I was very unlucky," he said. "I came around into the main straight in front of the pits and I said, `Is it really raining?' I tried to brake and there was water everywhere.



"The amazing thing is on the back part of the track it is not raining, so that took me completely by surprise.



"Obviously, that killed any opportunity of really having a go at the pole. We thought we had a shot at it. Unfortunately, we will never be able to prove it."



Drivers again competed in single-car qualifying, the first such format for CART on a street course.


Bureau Report