Dan Clarke has held on to the most unlikely pole position of the 2006 Champ Car season after the young Englishman was helped out by some typically English type weather at Road America on Saturday.

After poor weather rendered Friday's provisional qualifying session at the four-mile road course completely wet save for the final, critical few minutes in which Clarke and Charles Zwolsman gambled on slick tyres, Saturday's conditions were even worse with none of the 17 CCWS contenders able to break the two-minute barrier.

Such were the conditions that Clarke didn't even bother risking his CTE Racing-HVM Lola-Ford in final qualifying, safe in the knowledge that his maiden career Champ Car pole was all but confirmed and when the chequered flag fell at the end of the 30-minutes both Clarke and the entire CTE team erupted in rapturous applause at their first pole position since Ryan Hunter-Reay's 2004 effort at Milwaukee.

Clarke will be joined on the front row for Sunday's race by current points leader Sebastien Bourdais, who added to his already substantial championship lead with the quickest time in final qualifying. Although Bourdais' best effort was some eleven seconds slower than Clarke's polewinning time, his 2mins 06.460secs best lap was still more than half a second faster than anyone else managed all afternoon.

Bourdais aside, the remainder of the field will line up as they qualified on Friday with Charles Zwolsman dropping from second to third courtesy of Bourdais and Alex Tagliani moving back on place to fourth.

AJ Allmendinger will roll off from fifth on the grid with Justin Wilson, second fastest to Bourdais on Saturday, starting sixth.

Katherine Legge will start from eighth while Paul Tracy will have his work cut out for him from eleventh on the grid.