Verizon IndyCar Series championship leader Simon Pagenaud edged Team Penske teammate Will Power to win pole for tomorrow’s Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama. A Penske auto has won all four poles, too, after Simon Pagenaud won it for Sunday’s race.
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Power, a two-time victor on the 17-turn, 2.3-mile (3.7km) road course, had the second-fastest lap. He’s second in the standings behind Pagenaud, a far cry from this time previous year, when a win at Long Beach pushed him from 14th to fourth in the standings.
Defending champion Josef Newgarden will start on the second row alongside Dixon, who was fourth fastest in qualifying for his Chip Ganassi team with 01:07.2083. He had a chance to win here last season but a mix up with the team in fuel mileage took him out of contention. BACK IN THE PACK: Indianapolis 500 victor Juan Pablo Montoya of Team Penske finished last in his group in the first session and will start at the back of the 21-car field.
After grabbing the first six spots in qualifying, Chevy drivers went on to sweep the podium. “Same spot we started previous year and we finished fifth”.
Simon Pagenaud won Sunday by holding off Dixon’s furious charge in the second half of the race.
“We decided to make it exciting for the fans”, Pagenaud said after the victory. After the 100-miler Gohde got the winner’s autograph in the pits, something he couldn’t do when he saw Hank Aaron hit a home run at County Stadium, and, again, he was hooked.Paul began attending the Indianapolis 500 in 1961, and saw A. J. Foyt’s first Indy win. Dixon is off to one of his best starts with a win and a second-place finish in the first three races.
Of course leave it to Sebastien Bourdais – who’s one of the sharpest minds in the field and will start fifth in his No. 11 Europa Chevrolet – to explain the randomness of when you get cautions in IndyCar. “I think our strategy here typically has been pretty interesting in the past”. We’re going for cleanliness.
IndyCar tightened the rules this week to address some of the issues that occurred in Long Beach. I always thought it was just a blast.
The transponders going in at the electronic pit exit commit line should register who exits cleanly and who doesn’t.
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Newgarden doesn’t expect the same circumstances to play out in Sunday’s race (4 p.m. ET, NBCSN), although obviously he would take that in an IndyCar minute.
