Last gasp Kanaan heads Long Beach practice.

As predicted, lap times tumbled in the second free practice session for the Toyota Grad Prix of Long Beach with 1999 Long Beach pole-position winner Tony Kanaan continuing his strong form with fastest time of the day in the final minute of Friday practice.

Several Long Beach 'experts' headed the time-sheets after the completion of the second Friday practice session at the twisty1.9-mile Long Beach street circuit with Tony Kanaan, the man who nearly took a stunning debut win at the track in 1999, heading the charge in his Mo Nunn owned Reynard-Honda.

Kanaan clipped almost two seconds off his morning time as he moved one place up the time-sheets to first overall with a best lap of 1 minute 07.759 seconds to head Spaniard Oriol Servia, who finished sixth on his rookie appearance at the circuit last year, and last year's race winner Paul Tracy.

Kanaan's best lap is already just two tenths outside Gil De Ferran's 2000 pole mark of 1 minute 07.494 seconds and with track conditions expected to improve in time for the all important single qualifying session on Saturday afternoon, that mark should be eclipsed by a number of drivers.

"Well, they took out the corner where I crashed here [while leading the 1999 race], so that makes me happy," said a typically upbeat Kanaan. "This morning we changes tyres at the end of the session, but we didn't have any time to get back out on track. This afternoon, we started the session with the same set-up we ran this morning, and then we changed tyres and I only did one lap on the new set [his fastest], so I'm pleased to be here."

Kanaan was also quick to praise his team-mate and two time Long Beach winner Alex Zanardi, who despite languishing down in 22nd place overall with a best lap of 1 minute 09.404 seconds, has been a great help to his Brazilian partner over the weekend.

"Alex has been a big help," added Kanaan. "He actually really helped me with some changes we did this afternoon. We need to improve to stay here tomorrow, but it's good so far," added the Hollywood sponsored driver who will run in the second qualifying group courtesy of his seventh place finish in Mexico.

In just his second race for the new Sigma-Autosport Lola-Ford outfit, last year's runner-up to Kenny Brack in the Rookie of the Year standings Oriol Servia was looking forward to going for his second top ten starting place in two races for the new team and despite being over half a second off Kanaan's best time with a lap of 1 minute 08.305 seconds, the Spaniard was feeling good for Saturday.

"I'm happy. It's good to be there now, but it's more important to be there tomorrow and Sunday," announced Servia, who for a long while looked as though he was going to miss the Champ Car boat this season. "The last couple of months my emotions have been okay, but the months before they weren't so good because I didn't know where I was going to end up [after his 2000 team, PPI Motorsports shut their CART doors], and for a while it didn't look like I was going to end up anywhere. The first day I tried the Lola I thought it was a good choice."

Third represented a good effort for Paul Tracy and the Team KOOL Green outfit who had struggled with an oil-leak during the morning session and really only got things hooked up in the dying minutes of the afternoon session.

"We've had a lot of problems this weekend," divulged the Canadian, who has won twice around the streets of California. "This morning we had some boost problems. We wanted to save the tyres this morning so I only did about ten laps [good enough for 17th overall]. This afternoon, we had an oil-leak in the primary car and it was pretty big so we switched to the back-up car and had some problems with that. We didn't really get much running in until the last 20-minutes in the session, and we finally put in a good lap at the end. It shows how competitive this series is," added Tracy.

One of the most disappointed men after Friday practice was Helio Castroneves, who headed the lap-charts in the last three minutes with his best lap of 1 minute 08.388 seconds only to watch Kanaan, Servia and Tracy demote him to fourth place overall.

The Team Penske driver finished less than a tenth clear of Patrick Carpentier in the leading Player's/Forsythe entry after morning pace-setter Alex Tagliani was the only one of the 28 drivers entered this weekend not to improve on his earlier time, thus dropping from first to 19th.

Michael Andretti, still searching for his first Long Beach win since 1986, finished the day in a promising sixth position with a best lap of 1 minute 08.513 seconds while Roberto Moreno, Bruno Junqueira, Gil De Ferran and Christian Fittipaldi completed a largely Brazilian top ten.

Max Wilson found he could not continue his strong morning practice form and dropped from eighth to 17th, one place ahead of Dario Franchitti and three spots ahead of Mexico pole-sitter Kenny Brack. Even further back and in need of a boost in confidence was Alex Zanardi who was over 1.5-seconds slower than his team-mate and ended the day in a lowly 22nd, almost unthinkable for the man who left the Long Beach crowd standing in awe with his performances here in 1997 and 1998 for the Chip Ganassi team.