Power, who drives for Team Penske and entered the race third in the championship points standings, has now won three of the series’ last four races.
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Under yellow, the order was Dixon, Castroneves, Pagenaud, Power, Bourdais, the Schmidt Peterson auto of Mikhail Aleshin, Ed Carpenter Racing’s Josef Newgarden, Hinchcliffe, the fourth Penske of Juan Montoya, Kanaan and Conor Daly who had dropped four places from his superb seventh starting position.
Power, a two-time victor of the race, recorded the first sub-one minute lap of the weekend to date in the first round of qualifications, clocking in at 59.7747 seconds.
James Hinchcliffe will start off from sixth in the only Honda Indy Torornto.
“When we went out again on the third one, about to repeat the same lap time we did on the first run”.
Scott Dixon, the pole-sitter, finished eighth.
Team Penske’s driver caught a major break Sunday at Exhibition Place when he was on pit road for his final service when a caution came out.
Charlie Kimball and 2012 race victor Ryan Hunter-Reay collided on the first lap at Turn 8 causing a full course caution. The Verizon IndyCar Series points leader will try to widen the gap between him and the hard-charging second place Josef Newgardgen.
That sent Newgarden to the pits, the team also switching him from black tires to softer reds.
Kanaan took over on lap 60.
It’s Power’s third win of the season after capturing the second leg of the Chevrolet Dual in Detroit and the KOHLER Grand Prix on June 26.
When the race went back to green, Power stood second but was essentially the leader because Tony Kanaan didn’t have enough fuel on board to complete the 85-lap race. The New Zealand native slipped off, however, on the last 20 laps. Hunter-Reay was briefly delayed before getting back into the action. In the lower reaches of the Top 10, Montoya, Hinchcliffe, Daly were all running in close convoy behind Aleshin, until both Schmidt Peterson cars ducked into the pits on lap 25.
Pagenaud exited the pits early on lap 29. Pagenaud is on top, while Power is third in title points, and Castroneves fifth.
Newgarden’s quick hands tried valiantly to grab the wheel, but it was moving too quickly, and it appeared to shake the wrist.
Helio Castroneves was second in 59.9425 while Simon Pagenaud will start third on Sunday afternoon after clocking a time of one minute 0.2293 seconds.
Dixon made reference to the tightness of turns 10 and 11 in trying to get the cars lined up for a two-by-two start and there was some suggestion the drivers might ask for the start to be out on Lake Shore Boulevard, where there’s more room.
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Then suddenly Hinch was thrown a lifeline on when on Lap 81, Montoya understeered on marbles and into the tire wall at Turn 5…. where Hawksworth was already parked, complaining that Pagenaud had punted him into the wall.
