Power was less fortunate, tattooing the wall hard enough to seriously derange the Aussie Vineyards Dallara’s left-rear suspension, necessitating a hectic repair job that the KVRT team was unable to complete in time for the next round of qualifying. Although Power made it back on track. Thus, Power had to settle for 12th on the grid, next to Mr. Wheldon.

Junqueira was the least fortunate of all losing control on the exit of Turn Three, spinning and then nosing into the outside wall before doing another half spin and swiping the rear wing off the Z-Lines Designs car. Junqueira, who was P2 in his qualifying group at the time, also had his fast time wiped out and was left with a 1:22.3955 that put him 24th on the grid.

Tomas Scheckter was another to come to grief in qualifying. (IndyCar photo)

Turn Three wasn’t the only trouble spot. Tomas Scheckter hammered the wall in Turn 14 on his “out” lap in the first round of qualifying, inflicting heavy damage to the rear of the Symantec Luczo Dragon Racing entry, relegating himself to 26th and last on the grid . . . make that 25th and last as the woefully slow Marty Roth did everyone a favor by withdrawing from the race after crashing on his second lap of practice in the morning. According to an official statement, “damage to the car is more severe than initially thought and, with the limited amount of track time for Roth this weekend , (the team has) decided to focus on the season finale at Chicagoland Speedway” next weekend.

AGR: CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR The good news for Andretti Green Racing is that all four of its cars qualified within second of one another. The bad news is that -- again -- none of them made it past the second of the three qualifying rounds. Since Tony Kanaan put the 7-Eleven Dallara-Honda on the pole at St. Petersburg, the team has only made it into the top six of a road/street circuit on four occasions (Kanaan started sixth at Watkins Glen, fifth at Mid-Ohio and fourth at Infineon, while Marco Andretti qualified third at Mid-Ohio).

“This track is so particular that if you make one wrong change you can lose a full second,” said Kanaan. “We were close to making it, but I didn’t know what else to do. We made a change and it went the wrong way and, of course, we missed the Firestone Fast Six for only the second time. It’s a wake up call to the whole team that we have to do a better job. Here we’re struggling.”

“I was a bit disappointed with qualifying,” said Andretti, “but for what it’s worth, this is as close as we’ve been. Yesterday wasn’t very productive because we tried to adapt my driving style to that of Danica (Patrick) and Tony because they were quick. I just wasn’t able to do that, and it cost us the entire day. Today we tried to develop a car that worked for me, and we improved but came up a bit short of the second qualifying session.”

Patrick, too, saw some progress. “We are just off the lead pack,” she said, “and, hopefully, we can figure out that small piece that we are missing by the time the race starts tomorrow. But we’ve been able to get into the fast 12 these past two weekends, so we are definitely headed in the right direction on the road courses.”

EMERSON GOES GREEN - AGAIN Two-time World Champion, 1989 Indy car champion and Indy 500 winner Emerson Fittipaldi is in Detroit reprising the role he played in May when he drove the pace car for the Indianapolis 500.

“I’m driving the E-85 Corvette pace car, sending the message of alternative energy, the same message we sent at Indianapolis,” he said.

Not that that message has to be boring . . .

“I did four laps yesterday,” said Fittipaldi. “Then I had to stop because I was going too fast!”

DAVIDSON VISITS Former Super Aguri Formula One driver Anthony Davidson is in attendance at Detroit this weekend as the guest of Panther Racing. Davidson was scheduled to test the Panther Dallara-Honda two weeks ago at Infineon Raceway but injured his shoulder while mountain biking. According to the team, Davidson and GP2 driver Mike Conway are in the running for a second seat if the Panther can find the funding to run a second car in ’09.

GOOD NEWS/BAD NEWS The unification of Indy car racing has resulted in a significant increase in the entries for the IndyCar Series this year, with grids averaging slightly more than 26 cars (outside of the Indy 500 and the Twin Ring Motegi/Long Beach doubleheader) as opposed to the 18 cars that materialized for last year’s Detroit Indy GP.

While that’s good news on just about every front, it does figure to make for a nerve-wracking race for the faster cars as they negotiate their respective ways around through and past the lapped traffic on what is, by any standards, a difficult place to overtake.

“I think (traffic) is going to play a part,” offered polesitter Scott Dixon. “It played a part in the race last year (where he crashed while trying to lap Buddy Rice -Ed). I think Helio was leading and then got caught for a couple of laps. And then the three of us pitted two laps before him and actually jumped him because he got slowed down quite a bit.

“I hope it doesn’t play too much a part in the race. But, obviously, with more cars . . . I think we’re going to catch them a lot quicker than last year, too.”