Junqueira hoping for Road America triple.

The Champ Car World Series reaches its halfway point this weekend with Round Eight at Elkhart Lake in Wisconsin, posing an opportunity for Brazilian Bruno Junqueira to claim a third Road America win.

The permanent road circuit called Road America at Elkhart Lake will be hosting a Champ Car round for the 22nd consecutive year.

For the past three years, the Newman/Haas Racing pilot Junqueira has stood on the podium at Road America. He led from start to finish in the rain last year, came home third after winning the pole in 2002 and climbed from 10th to claim his first Champ Car World Series victory in his rookie season of 2001.

Currently the diminutive Brazilian sits in second place in the 2004 standings with 159 points, a total built with a year of consistent finishes including being runner-up in four races.

A fresh face tops the Champ Car point standings for this year's journey to Road America, with Junqueira's Newman/Haas Racing team mate Sebastien Bourdais building a 27-point lead on the strength of four wins and three poles.

Bourdais leads the series in wins, poles, laps led (292), prize money, qualifying average (1.86), and has finished in the top five in six of the year's seven rounds so far. He has qualified third or better in every race and heads to a Road America circuit where he finished second last year after qualifying on the outside of the front row.

Bourdais ended up splashing his way to second on a rainy Wisconsin Sunday last year, putting on a furious charge over the last few laps that saw him slice a four-second gap to just 0.708 seconds at the chequered flag.

The just-completed two-race Canadian journey provided a springboard for the defending series champion to get back into the hunt. Paul Tracy is aiming to become the first driver since Gil de Ferran to win back-to-back Champ Car titles.

Tracy won from pole in Vancouver to take over the third spot in the championship chase and hits a Road America circuit where he has captured two wins and three poles in his career.

The Rocketsports Racing squad will be hoping to build on the solid performances by lead driver Alex Tagliani so far this season. Tagliani has a good recent history at Road America with a podium finish for the past two years.

Tagliani made up 10 spots to finish third last year and followed former champion Cristiano da Matta to a second-place result in 2002. Tagliani has qualified in the top three in three of the past four visits to Elkhart Lake and posted the fastest time of the day during a 16-driver test session at the circuit in June.

Leading the series in laps completed, reigning Lexmark Indy 300 champion Ryan Hunter-Reay has moved into sixth spot in the standings, but could use a strong run to boost his title hopes. Hunter-Reay has not finished better than eighth since his dominant win in Milwaukee in Round Three, but did score a top-10 run in his rookie visit to Road America last year.

RuSport's A.J. Allmendinger fulfilled some of his boundless promise in Vancouver at his previous start, scoring his first Champ Car podium finish with a third-place run. The young Californian has wrenched the lead in the Rookie-of-the-Year point standings away from Brit Justin Wilson and has climbed into the eighth spot in the overall standings.