Seen in Long Beach

Top time today was 67.92s, almost a second short of the track record Bourdais set here a year ago. Does he think there's any chance that can be topped tomorrow? "I don't know," said Bourdais. "I think, like I always kind of said, I think that the Panoz is going to be quicker on road courses. On street courses, with the bumpiness and the fact that the car is a little more ride-height sensitive than the Lola, I think it's going to probably be a little difficult to get to that level of performance. But we'll have to see. It's still very early in the season with the new car. So it's definitely up there. It's got a different character than the Lola to drive. I personally don't like it quite as much yet, but hopefully we can get it there."………………..Graham Rahal is driving the same car he crashed last Sunday in Las Vegas. He crashed two cars last weekend, but the car he raced was in better shape and that is the one he was in one Friday………The 2-seat Minardi F1 car was turning 1m15sec laps on Friday, compared to a fast time of 1m07.9sec for the Champ Cars…………Tire wear is not an issue this weekend like it was last weekend in Las Vegas. "No, I think the tires are going to last well here," said Will Power. "It's quite the opposite [to Las Vegas] actually. I don't think the rear tires felt very bad at all – not on my car anyway." Sebastien Bourdais agreed. "No, I think tire wear is good — Bridgestone knows this place. It was a little bit of a surprise in Vegas they came out with apparently a little bit too soft of a tire. I guess next year probably the standard car is going to become the option tires, so on and so forth. But no drama here." There were tens of thousands of people watching ALMS qualifying Friday compared to the several hundred they had watching the ALMS race in St. Petersburg two weeks ago when they partnered with the IRL. Mark C.