Jourdain

MONTEREY, Calif. -- Patrick Carpentier was vaulted into his first pole of the CART season after Michel Jourdain's fastest lap was disallowed Saturday because his car was underweight.

Jourdain will start 13th place on the grid Sunday at Laguna Seca, based on his Friday qualifying speed of 113.524 mph. His ruined lap Saturday was 115.875.

"We are shocked and baffled at this development,'' Jourdain's team said in a statement. "The crew weighed the Gigante car just prior to qualifying and the car was overweight. The numbers just simply don't add up.

"We are currently investigating the discrepancy in the weight of the car.''

Carpentier, fifth in the CART standings, initially was pleased just to move up to third on the grid after qualifying fifth Friday.

"For some reason with us, the seasons always started slow,'' he said. "I am looking forward to the rest of the season.''

His lap at 115.8 was well short of the qualifying record of 118.969 set in 2000 by Helio Castroneves. Carpentier had not won a pole since last August at Mid-Ohio.

Bruno Junqueira, the fourth-fastest qualifier at 115.437, will start alongside Carpentier in the Grand Prix of Monterey because he took the provisional pole Friday.

Paul Tracy now will start third with a speed of 115.641, alongside rookie Sebastien Bourdais, who went 114.935.

Tracy won the first three races of the year and Bourdais, the next two.

Jourdain got his first CART victory in 126 starts two weeks ago at Milwaukee to assume the series points lead with 77. The pole point also was given to Carpentier. Junqueira and Tracy trail Jourdain by 10 points.

The development was a bitter one for Team Rahal, which was hoping Bobby Rahal could see his eighth victory at Laguna Seca. Rahal, the 1986 Indianapolis 500 winner and a three-time CART champion, has won here four times as a driver and three as an owner.

The penalty comes on the heels of the Toyota Atlantic race in which Rahal protege Danica Patrick was involved in an accident that sent her crashing into the tire barrier.

"We feel bad for Michel, who did a fantastic job in qualifying today,'' the statement said. "We hate to see his success taken away because of an error by the team.''

Sunday's 87-lap race will be run around a course that snakes for 2.238 miles and 11 turns -- including the corkscrew's 50-foot drop -- through the rolling hills of the Monterey Peninsula.