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[/media-credit]At the end of the qualifying session for the IZOD IndyCar Series, Dario Franchitti would set a quick time of 59.351 seconds to win the pole. It marked his second pole in the last four years at the Honda Indy Toronto.
“These Target boys have given us a really fast car all weekend,” he says. “They have taken very good car of both Scott (Dixon) and I. The times have all been so close all weekend – we happy to be a the top. The Firestone Reds have felt really good and we hit the rhythm and got really good grip during qualifying to get to the top. That was a really hard earned pole. Track position will be very important tomorrow and it is great be up front in Toronto again, the same place I won my first pole 15 years ago in 1997! Tomorrow is going to be a really good race for all the fans that come out to see us.”
Penske Racing’s Will Power would set the second quickest time at 59.3757 seconds after getting through the previous two rounds of qualifying barely.
“I didn’t have anything [in the end for Dario], but very happy to be second,” he says. “We’d struggled to get through every round and made it in each time. I just had one good lap, I could see I was slow on the out on my first set, so I had to put everything together and that was as good as we could possibly do. We’re happy to start on the front row, we all know what this race is about, a lot of crashing and bashing so we’ll stay out of that and be in good shape.”
Texas race winner Justin Wilson would qualify third after his issues during practice yesterday at a time of 59.4506 seconds.
“The Sonny’s BBQ car was really good in qualifying and the first round we thought we had a pretty good balance, made a couple of small adjustments and in the second round it was great,” he says. “We’re just really happy, we didn’t change anything into the third, and just didn’t quite get the lap I was looking for. You know, I think it was there, we just didn’t get it all together, so we’ll start and that’s good enough for tomorrow. It’s all about the crashing and bashing so hopefully we can stay out of that from now on, keep our heads down and have a good solid race.”
Sebastian Bourdais and Scott Dixon would round out the top five. Canadian Alex Tagliani would qualify sixth, though will start 16th as a result of a 10-grid spot penalty due to changing the motor.
Ryan Hunter-Reay qualified seventh, followed by Helio Castroneves and James Hinchcliffe. Hinchcliffe, who considers Toronto his home track, will suffer the same fate as Tagliani and will start Sunday’s race from 19th.
“Obviously yesterday didn’t go our way completely – the first session was a bit rough and then no running in the second session, so overnight we took a bit of a swing at it and definitely made the car a lot better for this morning,” he says. “It’s a big credit to the Go Daddy guys and everyone at Andretti Autosport, I think we made all our cars a bit better. It’s tough out there – this is IndyCar – it’s a lot of good drivers and it’s only a tenth-of-a-second that sort of makes a difference. Our big thing is we were using up our tires quicker than other guys. I think the second lap was always my quickest and I didn’t have a chance to improve on that so it’s too bad. We have to take the penalty so we’ll start 19th and see what we can do from there.”
Rookie Simon Pagenaud rounded out the top 10.
Both Takumo Sato and E.J. Viso would suffer penalties due to “qualifying interference”. They would get their two quickest times removed.
