LEXINGTON, Ohio (AP) Drivers aren't happy with the changes in CART's qualifying procedures for road races this season, but they don't know what can be done to change them.

For several years, road qualifying took place in two 30-minute sessions, with what were determined to be slower cars in one session and faster ones in the other.

This year, CART decided to go to one-hour sessions for the full field. Most drivers have been reluctant to take to the track early, preferring to wait in hopes that someone else would go out first and lay rubber down, making it faster.

This has led to crowded tracks in the final 15 or 20 minutes of qualifying, creating a situation that many drivers say helps keep speeds down because there's too much traffic.

This happened again in Friday's qualifying for the CART Mid-Ohio Grand Prix. No one was out for the first half-hour, and no driver came close to completing the 15 qualifying laps allotted.

"I think it's pretty obvious when people wait until the very last minute and they go out," said Christian Fittipaldi, who was second-fastest Friday. "They have a huge domino effect, and to be quite honest with you, it isn't anyone's fault. but at the end of the day it is, because everyone's screwing up everyone else's lap out there.

"If I have a car in front of me that's slowed down because of two cars that are in front of him that also slowed down, it creates a huge chain reaction and there's nothing you can do. So I think everyone should be mad at everyone right now.

"If you're slowing down, you should get out of the way. That's what common sense tells you. But unfortunately, it doesn't go that way."

"As Christian was saying, it's a game you play," said his Newman-Haas teammate, Cristiano da Matta, who qualified second. "You wait until the very end for the better track. You get more traffic. ...

"Today, exactly the same thing happened that happened in Vancouver two weeks ago on the Friday session when everybody went out at the same time with like 20 minutes to go. ... Of course, that makes the track very busy. I'm sure everyone is going to be complaining about the same thing."

The next day at Vancouver, some drivers went out early. But neither da Matta nor Fittipaldi would guarantee that would happen this time. When asked if tactics would change Saturday, da Matta said, "I don't know. I wish it changed, but I don't want to be the first out."

MORE NETWORK TV: John Lopes, CART's vice president of racing operations, said the series is working with CBS, Fox and Speed Channel to ensure that at least half next year's races would be on the two non-cable networks.

This year, Speed Channel is televising 11 of the series' 19 events, including all but one of the eight races remaining after this weekend.

Lopes, speaking to about 700 fans at a question-and-answer session, said sponsors are pleased with this year's coverage because they're getting many more mentions than in the past.

That's because an average of 5½ hours of race-related events, including qualifying, are telecast each weekend, rather than the two-hour race and one-hour qualifying coverage CART had in past years on ABC and ESPN.

Rena Shanaman, vice president for joint venture operations, said it was CART's intent to continue racing in Cleveland. She also said the series anticipated having a race in southern Europe next year to complement its event at Rockingham, England.

A race scheduled next month at Lausitz, Germany, was canceled because the track had financial problems, but the Rockingham 500 will be run Sept. 14 as scheduled.

She also said next year's schedule would open with a street race in St. Petersburg, Fla. The schedule has not been released.

Lopes said CART would race somewhere in Texas in 2004, but added that it wouldn't be at Texas Motor Speedway, where a race was canceled last year because it was felt speeds there were becoming too dangerous.

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