The top five on the grid for the Verizon IndyCar Series’ penultimate round, the INDYCAR Grand Prix at The Glen presented by Hitachi (2 p.m. ET, NBCSN), are all 35 years of age or more and debuted in IndyCar at least a decade ago (from 1998 to 2005), if not earlier.
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Scott Dixon, a three-time victor at The Glen, topped the charts in the No. 9 Target Chevrolet in both sessions: he turned a fast lap of 1:23.8921 seconds at 144.614 mph in the morning session and 1:22.8740 at 146.391 mph in the two-hour afternoon session to edge Castroneves and Will Power of Team Penske.
Team Penske’s Will Power will join Dixon on the front row, with Sebastien Bourdais and Helio Castroneves making up the second row. “We had such a smooth one”. Dixon tied Montoya in points, winning the title on a tiebreaker (more wins during the season).
“I’m very disappointed with the ruling”, said Rahal, who will start 20th. “I’ll definitely remember this one”. With the times dropping, they may well get faster tomorrow (during qualifying) on red tires. They made wheel contact. “Just happy we scraped through”. “It’s very rare that you get to see these large elevation changes in a course and it’s just handsome and watching the cars do that is fantastic”. “I think our team has done the best job all season, and if I drive the best I can, it should take care of itself”. We put a lot of work into the Arrow Electronics auto and made it a lot better from yesterday and we had P4 in that session. “Right now, we’re still in the championship top four”.
While Dixon improves from sixth to third overall, he won’t be in contention for a fifth crown when the series concludes in California in two weeks.
Those two are the only drivers who have a chance to win the series title heading into the season finale September 18 at the GoPro Grand Prix of Sonoma. Tony Kanaan sits third and Carlos Munoz is eighth with just 34 points between them.
“We had to have a lot of things go our way at Sonoma a year ago”.
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Pagenaud, who does not have a medical degree, said he saw Power and thought he seemed “totally normal; he seems OK”. The guys did such a good job and we’re going to be starting way further back than we deserve to be for really no reason. Just in the shear fact that we had such a smooth one, which made it hard also going into the race.
