Pagenaud draws first blood with Sonoma pole

Pagenaud’s 1min16.2565sec on used red [soft] tires eclipsed Helio Castroneves’ best on fresh reds by 0.1569sec, to demote teammates Juan Pablo Montoya and Power to the second row. It also moves Pagenaud to 44 points ahead of Power.

Power, who has won pole at Sonoma five times in the previous six years, tried both used reds and new blacks but came up 0.4sec short.

In fact, he was lucky to cling on to the second row, as Graham Rahal reversed the trend of Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing-Honda’s weekend and came up just five-hundredths of a second shy of interrupting the Penske 1-2-3-4.

It will be an all-Honda third row, as Ryan Hunter-Reay put his personally tumultuous week behind him to make it through to the Firestone Fast Six session, as he tries to match or better his best finish of the year (third).

Defending Sonoma race-winner and outgoing champion Scott Dixon was the first major scalp to fall, although in the context of a difficult weekend for Chip Ganassi Racing-Chevrolet, his seventh place was impressive – especially considering his #9 crew changed his brakes between Q1 and Q2 due to a major vibration. He missed the Firestone Fast Six by just 0.003sec.

He will start alongside Andretti’s Alexander Rossi who, although this is his local track, had never even driven Sonoma until last week’s test. Sebastien Bourdais, whose KVSH Racing-Chevrolet was the one team not to test here last Thursday, was ninth fastest ahead of Josef Newgarden who is chasing third in the championship standings for Ed Carpenter Racing-Chevrolet. This was a reasonable recovery, given that he shunted at Turn 2 in morning practice.

Twelfth and 13^th on the grid will be Charlie Kimball and Tony Kanaan, ahead of a disappointed Marco Andretti who came up half a second short of matching teammate Ryan Hunter-Reay, and thus didn’t make it out of Group 1. Teammate Carlos Munoz was an equally downbeat 16^th, separated by Takuma Sato in the fastest of the AJ Foyt Racing-Hondas. 

Sonoma, Qualifying

P.	N°	Driver	Team (Engine)	Time
1	22	Simon Pagenaud	Penske (C)	1:16.2565
2	3	Helio Castroneves	Penske (C)	1:16.4134
3	2	Juan Pablo Montoya	Penske (C)	1:16.5400
4	12	Will Power	Penske (C)	1:16.6659
5	15	Graham Rahal	Rahal (H)	1:16.7149
6	28	Ryan Hunter-Reay	Andretti (H)	1:16.9132
7	9	Scott Dixon	Ganassi (C)	1:16.5700
8	98	Alexander Rossi	Andretti-Herta (H)	1:16.5840
9	11	Sébastien Bourdais	KVSH (C)	1:16.6115
10	21	Josef Newgarden	Carpenter (C)	1:16.8142
11	7	Mikhail Aleshin	Schmidt (H)	1:16.8909
12	83	Charlie Kimball	Ganassi (C)	1:16.9627
13	10	Tony Kanaan	Ganassi (C)	1:16.9481
14	27	Marco Andretti	Andretti (H)	1:16.9288
15	14	Takuma Sato	Foyt (H)	1:16.9661
16	26	Carlos Muñoz	Andretti (H)	1:17.0314
17	41	Jack Hawksworth	Foyt (H)	1:17.0823
18	8	Max Chilton	Ganassi (C)	1:17.1310
19	20	Spencer Pigot	Carpenter (C)	1:17.3052
20	5	James Hinchcliffe	Schmidt (H)	1:17.1926
21	18	Conor Daly	Coyne (H)	1:17.6771
22	19	R.C. Enerson	Coyne (H)	1:17.3264