Grabbing his sixth pole this year for Sunday's race, da Matta clocked a best lap of one minute 18.959 seconds.

Scotsman Dario Franchitti was second fastest with another Brazilian, Bruno Junqueira, taking third.

"It was a perfect qualifying run," said da Matta, who has won eight of his last 14 Cart races. "My only concern was to push it."

The qualifying runs also allowed a comparison of Cart lap times with those of Formula One, whose drivers raced on the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in the Canadian Grand Prix in June.

In the F1 event, Williams driver Juan Pablo Montoya took pole with a record lap time of 1:12.386 seconds - more than six seconds faster than da Matta.

But the Brazilian defended the Cart series by saying it was the tyre war between Michelin and Bridgestone that had brought F1 times down.

"Someone told me this morning the (F1 pole time) was 1:19.00 in 1999, 1:18.4 seconds in 2000.

"They went to 1:15.00 during the first year of the tyre war, then 1:12.8 seconds this year.

"So they improved by six seconds just by having two different tyre manufacturers.

"Speed-wise, if both had similar compounds, you would be within two seconds, which is pretty darn close for the difference in the budgets."