2012 IndyCar Series Champion Ryan Hunter-Reay found his way back to the top of the charts after winning the pole for the Honda Grand Prix of Alabama. Hunter-Reay laid down a lap of one minute, seven seconds for the third pole of his career, first pole of the season. His last pole came at Edmonton in 2012.
“This team has done so well this weekend, we just kept progressing and we knew where we needed to work on it,” he said. “I really went to work on my driving as well, and we all did it together here. It’s a great position to start from and now we need to go make it work in warm up and for the race, making these Firestones hang in there for an entire race. That’ll be the challenging part.”
Hunter-Reay finished 18th in the opening event of the season at St. Petersburg after running into some mechanical problems.
Defending race winner Will Power qualified second, three tenths off of Hunter-Reay’s quick time. It marks his third front row start in four starts at Barber Motorsports Park. Power has won two of the three races, including the last two.
Power was running third in the closing laps of the race at St. Pete before he suffered heavy contact from JR Hildebrand under caution. Power would finish the race 16th.
In just his second IndyCar Series start, Tristan Vautier qualified third for his career-best start after starting sixth at St. Pete. Vautier ran inside the top five for much of the race at St. Pete before mechanical problems took him out of the running.
Scott Dixon would qualify fourth after struggling last week in St. Petersburg. Dixon set a new track record of 1:06.7750 in Segment 1, but was unable to back up that time during the Firestone Fast Six.
“Here the car has been decent the whole time,” Dixon said. “We have just been trying to work out some of the issues that we have had at St. Pete. This isn’t the best track to do it but it gives us a bit of direction. I am a bit bummed about qualifying, you know we were fastest in Q1 and Q2 and then just a bit of missed timing, a bit on my behalf, didn’t go out hard enough and then tried to expect some more from the tires later and it just wasn’t there. So, I don’t think we quite would have gotten a 7.0 that Ryan did, you know we did a 6.7 earlier on new tires but he did a hell of a job and putting a good lap together. You know race day is a different day and hopefully we can move up three spots”.
Charlie Kimball would round out the top five for his best start in the IndyCar Series. His previous best start was seventh at Motegi in 2011.
After leading practice, Helio Castroneves would qualify sixth for his first start outside of the front two rows at Barber.
St. Petersburg race winner James Hinchcliffe qualified 20th.
“We’ve been struggling a little bit this weekend compared to the test,” Hinchcliffe said.”We didn’t have the quickest car, but had enough for Q2… got held up by another car and ended up getting knocked out. It’s frustrating but we’ve got an extra set of reds (Firestone red alternate tires) than those guys now in the race and maybe degradation will come into it tomorrow. We’ll keep fighting and hopefully get the Go Daddy car up in a good position by the end of the day.”
The IndyCar Series will take to Barber Motorsports Park for the Honda Grand Prix of Alabama at 3pm EST on Sunday.
