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Qualifying report

Iowa IndyCar: Power beats Hildebrand to pole

Will Power scored the 48th pole of his career in IndyCar qualifying at Iowa Speedway to crush JR Hildebrand’s dreams of scoring his first.

Polesitter Will Power, Team Penske Chevrolet

Polesitter Will Power, Team Penske Chevrolet

Michael L. Levitt / Motorsport Images

With the final run of the day, Power’s Penske-Chevrolet clocked laps of 185.041 and 185.379mph to score an average of 185.210. It is his fourth pole of the year, and second at Iowa Speedway. 

That was 1.4mph faster than JR Hildebrand, who bounced back from a shunt in morning session to clock an average of 183.811mph and cement a place on the front row.

Behind this pair were their teammates Helio Castroneves and Ed Carpenter, who were also in the 183mph bracket. Castroneves set a strong 184.623mph on his first lap but hit his revlimiter into Turn 1 on his second lap.

Indy 500 winner Takuma Sato was fastest Honda driver in the #26 Andretti Autosport entry, ahead of Mikhail Aleshin’s Schmidt Peterson Motorsports-Honda, while Tony Kanaan was fastest Chip Ganassi Racing-Honda driver.

Ed Jones showed that Dale Coyne Racing’s improvements on ovals this year are not confined to superspeedways, and he will roll off eighth, ahead of the second SPM car of James Hinchcliffe, and a brave wall-riding effort from Graham Rahal.

Last year’s polesitter Simon Pagenaud in the third Penske was only 11th, but he was doing better than his teammate and defending race winner Josef Newgarden.

Both of them were happier than championship leader and Road America winner Scott Dixon whose loss of 25mins from this morning’s session cost him a qualifying sim run.

He will start alongside Esteban Gutierrez, who makes his oval race debut this weekend. He was 2.9mph off teammate Jones.  

2011 Iowa winner Marco Andretti believes something broke on his qualifying run, leaving him with laps of 174.7 and 168.8, and starting 20th.

The one person who will start behind him is AJ Foyt Racing’s Carlos Munoz, who kissed the wall on his opening lap.

Qualifying results:

Pos.DriverTeamMph
1 12 australia  Will Power   Team Penske-Chevrolet 185.210
2 21 united_states  J.R. Hildebrand   Ed Carpenter Racing-Chevrolet 183.811
3 3 brazil  Helio Castroneves   Team Penske-Chevrolet 183.712
4 20 united_states  Ed Carpenter   Ed Carpenter Racing-Chevrolet 183.503
5 26 japan  Takuma Sato   Andretti Autosport-Honda 182.653
6 7 russia  Mikhail Aleshin   Schmidt Peterson Motorsports-Honda 182.454
7 10 brazil  Tony Kanaan   Chip Ganassi Racing-Honda 182.394
8 19 united_arab_emirates  Ed Jones   Dale Coyne Racing-Honda 182.290
9 5 canada  James Hinchcliffe   Schmidt Peterson Motorsports-Honda 181.187
10 15 united_states  Graham Rahal   Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing-Honda 181.138
11 1 france  Simon Pagenaud   Team Penske-Chevrolet 181.137
12 98 united_states  Alexander Rossi   Andretti-Herta Autosport-Honda 181.136
13 8 united_kingdom  Max Chilton   Chip Ganassi Racing-Honda 180.927
14 83 united_states  Charlie Kimball   Chip Ganassi Racing-Honda  180.863
15 28 united_states  Ryan Hunter-Reay   Andretti Autosport-Honda 180.716
16 2 united_states  Josef Newgarden   Team Penske-Chevrolet 180.343
17 9 new_zealand  Scott Dixon   Chip Ganassi Racing-Honda 180.302
18 18 mexico  Esteban Gutierrez   Dale Coyne Racing-Honda 179.389
19 4 united_states  Conor Daly   AJ Foyt Racing-Chevrolet 178.613
20 27 united_states  Marco Andretti   Andretti Autosport-Honda 171.710
21 14 colombia  Carlos Munoz   AJ Foyt Racing-Chevrolet no time

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