Bourdais take another provisional pole

San Jose, CA (Sports Network) - Sebastien Bourdais won Friday's provisional qualifying session for the San Jose Grand Prix. The No.1 Newman/Haas/Lanigan driver circled the 1.448-mile, 11-turn, temporary circuit in 49.509 seconds (104.926 m.p.h.).
The provisional pole win, his fifth of the season, earned Bourdais one championship point and a guaranteed position on the front row.
Justin Wilson was second quickest at 49.747 seconds. Will Power (49.822), Bruno Junqueira (49.852) and Alex Tagliani (49.852) completed the top-five.
Bourdais, the three-time series champion, has a 20-points lead on "rookie" Robert Doornbos. Doornbos is a former F1 driver for Minardi (2005) and Red Bull (2006) which were not really competitive against the giant teams of F1 like Ferrari and McLaren. But the team came to that realization and made the move across the Atlantic Ocean to Champ Cars.
Doornbos is finally getting to show what he can do when he gets in a competitive car. He opened his rookie Champ Car Series campaign with a second place finish at Las Vegas. Following his only bad outing at Long Beach (13th), Doornbos put himself on the podium four consecutive times including a win at Mont-Tremblant. He was on his way to another top-10 result last week when Alex Tagliani took him out in a late-race incident. Doornbos has earned six top-10s in eight starts.
Behind Doornbos is Power (-25) and Wilson (-29). Both are still very much in the championship race.
The final qualifying session is set for Saturday at 5 p.m. (et) with the race set to drop the green flag on Sunday at 6 p.m.