Well done Moreno

[BootsOntheSide]

Roberto Moreno has brilliantly marked his 100th CART start by taking his second career pole in qualifying for the race at Surfer's Paradise, Australia. Gil De Ferran starts second with Penske team-mate Helio Castro-Neves 10th and chief title rival Kenny Brack 13th. De Ferran can clinch the title here, as he needs to finish 3 points ahead of Brack and at worst 14 behind Castro-Neves.

[D.R.T.]

Yeah, great news for Roberto. Down here in Australia the weather turned full circle in about 12 hours, rain now nice sunshine. The first session was carnage, wrecks all round the track. Alex Barron tore off the right hand side of his car and left carbon fibre all over the race track.

[ma]

Good for Moreno - gives us old farts hope!

[R]

Good for Moreno to be on pole, but not so good for the championship that Gil is next to him. I hope Roberto can keep him behind going into the first corner, and that the end results goes in a way which means that the championship will go down to the wire at Fontana.

I'm really looking forward to this race. In a strange kind of way, there's something charming about getting up at 6 am CET on a Sunday to watch a race from Australia. Don't ask me why, I just dig it! In any case, there'll be one hour extra sleep this time, due to the fact that summer time finishes tonight.

[Liz]

We get to stay up all night for the race - and that one extra hour will be great - but the poor souls in the USA cant' see it until it's been over for 12 hours. I hope Gil does well but at Australia he has never been very lucky!

Hurrah for Moreno, and I hope this convinces Patrick to give him another contract. He deserves it a lot more than some of the young twerps that littered the track in the morning session (including Vasser - how can anybody think a guy who can't even get sponsors is worth keeping over Moreno?)