FORT WORTH, Texas – It was another Team Penske sweep in Friday’s Verizon IndyCar Series qualifications for Saturday night’s Firestone 600 at Texas Motor Speedway with Will Power claiming the 40th pole of his Verizon IndyCar Series career.
The Team Penske driver had a two-lap average of 218.319 miles per hour in a Chevrolet.
“I feel like every track I go to now, I have a shot to win,” Power said. “I really look forward to coming to ovals. I enjoy them a lot. It's just a part of IndyCar racing. To win the championship, you have to be good at all disciplines. Actually, you've got to be the best at all disciplines to win the championship.
“I think it's cool. The series has really such a variety of all sorts of tracks as far as street courses, road courses, short ovals, mile-and-a-half high-banked ovals, even high-banked short ovals, superspeedways. You have to be good at all of that. I've spent a lot of time in IndyCar now, seems like I'm strong everywhere.”
“It’s an inner team battle and you have Dixon in there. I have to focus a race at a time, don't even think about it. Just focus on my job and myself.”
Team Penske teammate Simon Pagenaud qualified on the outside of the front row with a two-lap average at 218.441 miles per hour, also in a Chevrolet.
“The car is really nice actually,” Pagenaud said. “It's a nice carryover from Indy. Just missed it by a little bit, right? I tried to push it as hard as I could. We dropped a bit on the second lap, but hat off to the Team Penske boys. They're giving us fantastic cars. It makes our lives super easy as a driver."
Four-time Texas IndyCar winner Helio Castroneves rounded out the top three at 218.069 mph in a Chevrolet with last week’s Detroit Race No. 1 winner Carlos Munoz fourth in a Honda at 217.831 mph.
INDYCAR officials have added more downforce to the cars this weekend to make for better racing and it should increase tire degradation.
“I think actually IndyCar is really well balanced with the level of downforce,” Pagenaud said. “This morning was interesting. It's really in our hands to drive the car, slide around a little bit in the corners, the tires are being used up quite a bit because of the lack of downforce. It's great. It's giving us the opportunity to really drive hard.
“There's a bit of a drop-off I think you'll see similar to last year where we're going to start pretty fast, in the 215 area, and then we're going to drop off in the 205 miles per hour average at the end of a stint.
“It's going to be interesting strategy, a lot of passing. That's what it's all about here in Texas. Pretty excited about it actually.”
Power was the fastest driver from the very beginning of qualifications.
“I drew No. 1 obviously this morning in the drivers meeting and I was a little worried about the conditions,” Power said. “It kind of stayed consistent over the whole run of qualifying.
“I was really happy to get pole honestly. I felt if I could be in the top five, I'd be happy. Starting first, really happy about that. The race, it's going to be interesting. You know, you got all this stuff you can put on to add downforce if you want. But it's quite draggy, so you lose a bit of speed.
“It's going to be about finding the right compromise for speed loss versus grip. I guess we'll try some things tonight and see how it all stacks up. I think you'll see a few different variations of what people bolt on as far as body kits go for the race.”
Qualifying results:
1. Will Power – 218.519 mph
2. Simon Pagenaud – 218.441 mph
3. Helio Castroneves – 218.069 mph
4. Carlos Munoz – 217.831 mph
5. Juan Pablo Montoya – 217.530 mph
6. Graham Rahal – 217.438 mph
7. Scott Dixon – 217.411 mph
8. Tony Kanaan – 217.337 mph
9. Charlie Kimball – 217.323 mph
10. Sage Karam – 216.920 mph
11. Marco Andretti – 216.876 mph
12. James Jakes – 216.864 mph
13. Takuma Sato – 216.686 mph
14. Josef Newgarden – 216.210 mph
15. Ed Carpenter – 216.197 mph
16. Tristan Vautier – 215.929 mph
17. Jack Hawksworth – 215.621 mph
18. Sebastien Bourdais – 215.303 mph
19. Ryan Briscoe – 215.162 mph
20. Gabby Chaves – 215.146 mph
21. Ryan Hunter-Reay – 215.026 mph
22. Pippa Mann – 214.654 mph
23. Stefano Coletti – 211.930 mph
