Gritty third for Brack but 'disaster' for Papis.

Fortunes differed greatly in the Team Rahal camp following Saturday's qualifying session for the Texaco/Havoline Grand Prix of Houston with Championship leader Kenny Brack wringing every last tenth out of his Lola-Ford to secured third starting position while Max Papis floundered with a difficult car and qualified 19th.

Current CART FedEx points leader Kenny Brack will start third for Sunday's Texaco-Havoline Grand Prix of Houston after he posted a fastest lap of 59.947 seconds around the tight and twisty 1.5-mile street circuit in downtown Houston in Saturday's typically frantic sole qualifying session. The place is Brack's series leading 11th top-three start of the 2001 CART FedEx Championship Series season in which he owns a series high five pole positions.

The CART championship leader with 147 points, Brack saw his lead shrink to five points over Gil de Ferran after the Team Penske driver and defending series champion captured the pole position with a stunning 59.421 second lap with less than five minutes of the 30 minute session remaining.

"I was trying too hard on used tires at the end," said Brack of his third place run. "I was on a 'do or die' lap with about 10 seconds left in the session. In that position, the tires go off and you don't have that extra grip that you need. Shell Team Rahal did a fantastic job getting our car into this position after a tough day on Friday. We had some understeer in the middle of the corners and we tried to improve the car on that last run."

Looking ahead to Sunday's race, Brack says he is maintaining his focus despite De Ferran's dominance of the event thus far. "You can't change your approach towards the race. We made have been third in qualifying but I think we have as good a race car as anyone. We can't control what Gil does. We have to focus on our own stuff and work hard. Team Rahal has done that this weekend. I don't think anyone is concerned with contact in the race. Street races are tight and things can happen out there. We can't worry about those things. We have to drive to win the race."

Miller Lite sponsored Team Rahal driver Max Papis suffered differing fortunes in his 30 minute qualifying session and the Italian driver is still not happy with the base set-up of his car around the bumpy and demanding ten turn circuit. 'Mad' Max persevered through some mechanical problems to qualify 19th with a fast lap of 1 minute 01.289 seconds. Papis has a pair of top-five results at Houston in three previous starts including a fourth place result in 1999.

"It was a disastrous qualifying for us today," said Max afterwards. "We had the tire pressures too high at the beginning and the car was no where. It was slip sliding around a lot. We have been trying some new parts on the Miller Lite car this weekend and I think we are still working on the development. With this qualifying spot (19th), we are going to have to pull out a new strategy for the race. But we have made a good fuel strategy from the back behind before and we can used it Sunday."