because he was 2.002 seconds slower than Montin. Mathieu Zangarelli was next up ahead of Alex Yoong and Scheckter. Collins was 15th. He was followed by the Japanese trio of Ara, Haruki Kurosawa and Yuji Ide in three of the following four places; they were separated by Enrico Toccacelo in 18th. Miloš Pavlović, Andy Priaulx, Friesacher, Zsolt Baumgartner, Ying Kin Lee, Shinichi Takagi, Kaneishi, Lei, Michael Ho, Jo Merszei and Montiero were the last ten drivers on the provisional grid. Monteiro did not set a lap because he crashed at the R Bend corner and stopped the session after five minutes. The R Bend also caught out the Japanese duo of Kaneishi and Ara with the latter's accident prematurely ending the session with five minutes left because his car was on the racing line. In the second half an hour practice session, held on a dirty track and in cloudy weather, Sato and his teammate Karthikeyan exchanged the fastest lap throughout, but it was Sato who led at the conclusion of practice with a 2 minutes, 14.087 seconds lap, that he recorded in the session's final minutes having made overnight car setup changes. Karthikeyan was two-tenths of a second slower in second despite minor contact with a barrier beside the track. Provisional pole sitter Montin ran without problems and set the third-fastest lap. Monteiro, Kaffer and Cochet were in positions four to six. Couto duplicated his first practice and qualifying results in seventh. Fukuda, Yoong and Zangarelli completed the top ten. While the session passed without the need for a red flag stoppage, Lechner made light contact with a wall at the left-hand corner after the Melco hairpin and could not return to the pit lane. Scheckter hit a barrier at Moorish Hill turn. The second qualifying session had Priaulx set the early pace and moved past Montin to take the provisional pole position. One third of a way through, Karthikeyan bettered Priaulx's effort to top the time sheets and he held it until Fukuda took over the position. 20 minutes into the session, Karthikeyan reclaimed first with a new track record of the Guia Circuit with a time of 2 minutes, 12.887 seconds and held it to start the first leg from pole position. He was joined on the grid's front row by his teammate Sato who pushed hard to be almost four-tenths of a second slower. Fukuda improved