Bourdais admits standing start concerns.

Sebastien Bourdais has admitted he is not keen on the idea of standing starts in the Champ Car World Series on the eve of the Portland Grand Prix, the first race to be started in such a way.

Originally intended to be introduced at the Las Vegas season opener, concerns over the new Panoz's starting mechanism saw it delayed until the fourth round, but despite extensive testing, Bourdais claims he is concerned about drivers potentially stalling.

"For me there's still the doubt of the car stalling," he said. "Hopefully it will be okay. For me it's not good, for sure. I just hope nobody gets hurt out of it. I guess I'm talking as the safety representative. But, you know, that's all I can say.

"For the other drivers, I just hope nobody stalls at the front because obviously by the time the back markers get to you, it could be a potentially pretty ugly crash. So we'll see."

By contrast, Justin Wilson, who will start on the front row this weekend after securing provisional pole position, claims standing starts have the potential to make the racing more interesting and is looking forward to them.

"It's definitely spectacular, the standing start, I think is very exciting and I'm looking forward to it. But at the same time it's not guaranteed that you won't stall. It doesn't seem like there's many things that the driver does that changes that. It's just very random.

"When it happens, there's very little you can do. I haven't found anything you can do yet. It's just pretty much one in four the car will stall and you don't know what you did wrong. So that makes you nervous."