16.JUN
Detroit Qualifying

Qualifying for the road/street races in CART is limited to one 30- minute session and it is a daunting task to do it in such a limited time. Max Wilson had the added pressure of having only 22 minutes allotted to his qualifying effort.

	Max Wilson flashes down the fast back side of the temporary street circuit on Belle Isle, across the river from downtown Detroit. Check out the day's Slide Show

He had an off-course excursion in qualifying in Long Beach, which brought out a red flag during the session. This meant that by rule he had to serve an eight-minute penalty at the end of the qualifying session for the Tenneco Detroit Grand Prix.

He made the best of it though and turned a lap at 1:15.300, lowering his practice best time by 1.231 seconds and raising his average speed by nearly two miles an hour.

He would have been even faster but a spin by Alex Zanardi, and the resultant red flag, negated an even faster lap.

Computer telemetry showed that Max was on an even quicker lap than the one he had previously recorded.

"He keeps getting faster," commented general manager Bob Sprow. "The car keeps getting faster and we should be pretty good tomorrow."

The team was in the midst of making further changes to the car to make it faster when another red flag brought out by another driver used the remainder of the time allotted to Max's effort.