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.

Following his second place finish two weeks ago at St. Petersburg, Helio Castroneves would top the charts with a lap of one minute and eight seconds, 120.781 mph.

 “I think it’s better to be lucky than good,” he said. “Obviously with the yellow in the end a lot of guys probably put tires, but the car felt pretty good. The AAA team felt really strong, the morning unfortunately it was a little bit difficult because seeing that the track has lots of grip and when you have an extra set of tires certainly it helps a little bit. In the end of the day, with A.J. (Allmendinger) and Will (Power) we’ve been actually doing a lot of different stuff out there and it seems to be working.”

Alex Tagliani would time in second fastest, seven-hundereths off of Castroneves. Tagliani finished 10th at St. Pete.

“I am really proud of what the team accomplished here this weekend,” he said. “Obviously we are accustomed to being in the Firestone Fast 6 last year. I really didn’t like using the Port-a-Potty in the back of the grid. We struggled on the new tires. These tires are different. These are road course tires. We also had a chance to test here and the team came prepared.”

Rookie Tristan Vautier continued to impress after running up front most of the race last week as he timed in third fastest. Vautier, though, ran into mechanical problems at St. Pete which relegated him to a 21st place finish.

“It was good,” he said. “It was disappointing at the end of the first practice to cause a red because of a mistake, but no, I’m very happy with the car that the team has given me today. I think that I still have some room to keep improving, and we need to carry the momentum from today into tomorrow.”

Simon Pagenaud was fourth while Will Power rounded out the top five. Power led testing last month.

“We definitely have a bit of work to do with the Verizon car because we’re just off the pace a bit,” he said. “We were running top five all day, but we really had to push to get there. We’ll get together tonight and work to figure out how to improve for qualifying tomorrow.”

After struggling in St. Pete, Scott Dixon was sixth in practice, followed by EJ Viso, A.J. Allmendinger, James Jakes and Takumo Sato.

James Hinchcliffe, who picked up his first career victory at St. Petersburg, was 15th on the chart.

“Today did not go as planned, but you get these days in racing,” he said. “We had a couple of things go wrong in the first session, and the way the yellow fell in the second (session) we didn’t really get a proper run all day. I think we can get the Go Daddy car up there tomorrow when it counts. I think it’ll be a challenge, but that’s what they pay us the big bucks for.”

The IndyCar Series cars will take to the track tomorrow for qualifying, with the race scheduled for Sunday afternoon at 3pm EST.