Tenth for Brack but worse for Papis in qualifying.

Team Rahal drivers Kenny Brack and Max Papis endured a frustrating day of qualifying on Belle Isle for the Detroit Grand Prix. Both Brack's Shell team and Papis' Miller Lite crew continued searching for the optimum set-up throughout the morning practice and during the afternoon qualifying session.

Track conditions were considerably better on the second day of the race weekend and Brack was able to take advantage of the added grip by qualifying tenth with a fast lap of 1 minute 14.699-seconds, 1.2-secs behind pole-sitter and closest Championship rival Helio Castroneves.

Sunday will mark just the second time this season that Brack the series points leader has not started on the front row for a CART event. The last time he failed to start on the front row he posted his first career CART win at Twin Ring Motegi in Japan.

"We've been struggling this weekend with our Lola," announced Brack, whose points lead over Castroneves has been reduced by one point to 22. "The track surface isn't like it was last year. It's much bumpier. It makes the car very nervous and we've had trouble getting the balance that we want with the chassis. We basically missed a session Friday morning and we've been playing catch up ever since. I don't think we are really too far off on the proper set-up. It's just not where we want to be right now. My engineer Don Halliday has a few things up his sleeves that we can use for the race. I think that will help us. It's a difficult race here. You can't make a slight mistake."

Max Papis endured a particularly difficult day as he lost several of his fastest laps to track stoppages for other drivers incidents. Papis will start on the outside of row 12 after posting a lap of 1 minute 16.551-seconds.

"We kept trying different things throughout the day," said the normally ebullient Italian. "But the chassis balance wasn't there. It was a weird qualifying session. We had a good lap going when the red flag came out. We lost the lap. Then we didn't have enough time to find a proper space for another lap at the end. Starting so far back in the field, we can go to several different strategies in the race. This is always a fuel race and it might play into our hands on Sunday."