Franchitti storms to Road America pole.

With less than ten minutes to go in the final qualifying session at Elkhart Lake, Dario Franchitti in the Team KOOL Green Reynard-Honda became only the second driver ever to lap the four mile circuit in under 1 minute and 40 seconds when the Scottish driver produced a mark of 1 minute 39.866 seconds.

With provisional pole position holder Gil De Ferran having to sit out the final minutes of the session after causing a red flag during Friday's qualifying session, the only drivers who had a shot at displacing the Scotsman were Alex Tagliani, Michael Andretti and Mid Ohio winner Helio Castroneves.

With Dario sitting pensively on the pit-wall, his first pole position of the year hanging in the balance, he was hoping that the extra rubber laid down by the supporting events would make the track too sticky to make any improvements in time. For once, Dario's luck held out and only Tagliani was able to lower his lap time, a 1 minute 40.260 second mark good enough for third place.

Andretti's Friday time of 1 minute 40.401 seconds was still good enough for fourth place on the grid directly ahead of another driver whose Friday time proved to be his fastest, Adrian Fernandez. Castroneves could do no better than sixth in his back-up car.

"I'm very proud of the guys at Team Green," said a relieved Franchitti who scored his first ever Champ Car victory at the Elkhart Lake circuit in 1998. "But it's tomorrow that counts, we've just got to make no mistakes and I'm going to give it my best shot."

De Ferran was philosophical about losing a second consecutive pole position and the extra championship point that goes with it. As a result the gap between him and Andretti in the title chase stayed at 19 points. "I couldn't, didn't go quicker on my second set of tyres," said De Ferran. "I had some problem with my rear brakes locking and spun in Turn Five, that took the edge off the tyres and that was it. Dario beat us fair and square."

The previously dominant Team Penske outfit will have a job on their hands if they are to repeat last Sunday's one-two walkover after Castroneves was forced into his back-up machine for the final qualifying session. CART rules state that if a driver changes cars between qualifying sessions, all times from the first qualifying period are disallowed leaving Helio with a mountain to climb in an unfamiliar machine.

The spare car may have been unfamiliar to Castroneves but he didn't let it show and actually improved his time by half a second , an improvement only bettered by Franchitti amongst the top six drivers.

Paul Tracy was easily the fastest driver in the slower qualifying group and the Canadian driver was delighted with the work his team had done to his Reynard-Honda overnight. Tracy was more than a second quicker than he had been on Friday and somehow managed to avoid the spate of red flags that threatened to make a mockery of proceedings to set a best mark of 1 minute 40.682 seconds on a slower track.

Christian Fittipaldi could only find two tenths of a second in the sister Newman-Haas machine and will start from eighth place, second Lola next to his team-mate Andretti while Kenny Brack for once is not the best rookie qualifier and will start ninth.

Brack had a scary moment towards the end of final qualifying when he was nearly collected by the errant Ganassi machine of Juan Montoya who was still battling with vicious understeer. Montoya's mood wasn't lightened by the fact that he had to sit out the final eight minutes of qualifying after causing a red flag yesterday and the Colombian was mired down in twelfth place, still the fastest Toyota runner however.

Mauricio Gugelmin had an eventful day and was disappointed to drop from seventh to tenth after destroying his race car early in the session. The Brazilian driver will have to use his back-up car for the race and was unable to improve his Friday time to get him onto the grid. However he still has the pleasure of being a the fastest Mercedes powered runner and ahead of all representatives from Toyota.

Roberto Moreno retained his overnight position of eleventh although he had to trim half a second off his overnight time in order to retain his place while other notable improvements came from Max Papis, 19th to 15th, and Gualter Salles, no time at all to a 1 minute 44.436 second effort and a place on the grid.

220 miles around the undulating Road America circuit on what is predicted to be a hot and humid day in Wisconsin is not a prospect that many drivers will be relishing and the race will be a car breaker. Sunday could be another one of those days where if you are running at the end, you are going to get points.