FA: Matos takes provisional St Jovite pole.

For the third consecutive Champ Car Atlantic qualifying session, points leader Raphael Matos added to his championship lead as he guaranteed himself a front row starting spot for Sunday's race at Mont-Tremblant.

The Brazilian turned in a best lap of 1min 27.718secs in his Sierra Sierra Enterprises machine to score the point for claiming provisional pole, extending his lead in the championship to 31 points over team-mate James Hinchcliffe. Matos will be looking to hang on for his fourth pole of the season in Saturday's final qualifying session and will start from the front row for the fourth time in seven races.

"It was a quite good session for us," an understated Matos claimed, "Early on, I had an issue coming out of the pits. [JR] Hildebrand was doing something with his car when the session was green and I tried to pass him. We went side-by-side coming out of pit-lane and I let him by, but [the race officials] brought me into the pits. I lost a couple of laps, but it wasn't that bad because we made an adjustment in the car and we kept going.

"The session went pretty well. We were able to be in the second position on the grid with the old tyres. We made some adjustments in the car and put new tyres on, and it had a really good balance. I'm quite happy with that, and quite happy we're starting on the front row for Sunday's race. We'll see what happens tomorrow, but the car is quite good, so I am looking forward to qualifying tomorrow."

Just two-hundredths of a second behind Matos in an extremely competitive qualifying session was PR1's Jonathan Bomarito, who will now be looking to top his previous best starting spot of third, from Las Vegas and Long Beach. Bomarito opened the year with three straight top-four results, but has finished outside the top 20 in two of his last three appearances.

"It's a new weekend and a beautiful track," he insisted, "I haven't been here before, but it's immediately one of my favourites. It's a lot of fun. From the second we put the car on the track this morning, it's been good and we've just been fine-tuning it from there.

"Being second was great but, realistically, on the first day, it's almost like pole or nothing. That locks you into the front row, so we were going for it hard. I think I did two laps within a couple of hundredths of Rafa's, but I just need that tiny bit more. I had a little bit of traffic, but we're good, we're close, and I'm excited. We're moving on with the second half of the season - the last few races have definitely been tough, but we're going for race wins from here on out."

Hinchcliffe wound up third with a lap of 1min 27.990secs in another eventful qualifying session. The Canadian ran out of fuel a few minutes short of the chequered flag in last weekend's provisional qualifying session in Cleveland and made his final qualifying runs on three sticker tyres and one old tyre. This week, he lost his right rear tyre in turn twelve in the closing minutes of the session and was fortunate to avoid an incident.

"The session started off a bit rough for us, as we didn't have the car exactly where we wanted it," he revealed, "We came in and did a change and it started to get a little bit better, but we knew we needed new tyres because we kind of wore out our old ones. I came in, we strapped the new set on and I was clicking off some quick laps and getting quicker and quicker, but I kind of peaked and I think I was P2 at the time.

"I found a little bit more pace on the track and was putting together one or two more quick laps at the end, but heading through turn ten, I noticed the car felt a little bit looser than normal. I thought maybe I was running a bit too fast, but came through eleven and knew there was definitely something wrong, so I backed off early. When I hit the brakes for twelve, my right rear departed the car. It was a bit of a scary moment, and I was really lucky where it happened and also lucky that it didn't bring out a red and I didn't lose my lap."

Hinchcliffe is joined on the second row of the provisional grid by his fellow Toronto resident Robert Wickens, who posted the fourth quickest time of the session. Since taking the pole for his Atlantic debut in the Las Vegas season-opener, Wickens has not qualified better than fourth.

Wickens' closest pursuer in the race for rookie of the year honours, Franck Perera, was fifth quickest in provisional qualifying, the top five drivers all recording laps within just 0.419secs of each other. The top 13 were covered by less than one second.

Rookie Hildebrand turned the sixth quickest lap, making the most of previous experience at Circuit Mont-Tremblant, while local favourite Kevin Lacroix was eighth.

Matt Lee and Adrien Herberts both sat out Friday's provisional qualifying session, having been temporarily benched by series officials. The pair, who have history after colliding in Cleveland - with the result that Herberts rolled in turn one - came together at turn eight at the conclusion of the morning practice session, making contact with Brian Thienes, who ran into the rear of Lee before ricocheting into Herberts. Race officials determined that both Lee and Herberts were guilty of unjustifiable risk and the drivers were therefore excluded from the qualifying session. Thienes did participate in qualifying, taking 20th spot.