Will Power has led a Team Penske trifecta in qualifying for the Indy Grand Prix of Sonoma at Infineon Raceway.
The Toowoomba racer will share the front row with Helio Castroneves with fellow Aussie Ryan Briscoe to start third.
Looking to close the 47-point gap to IZOD IndyCar Series leader Dario Franchitti, Power scored his sixth PEAK Performance Pole Award of the season. The Scotsman will start fourth.
“Qualifying is very important here,” said Power.
“A Penske 1-2-3 is good, and we have two guys between the Target cars.”
“(The championship) is going to come down to who is going to make the least amount of mistakes.
“Dario still has a reasonable lead, but that could turn around in one weekend. Obviously, if we have a bad weekend and he is 70 points ahead with four weekends to go it will be tough … near impossible.
“We need to execute this weekend and just keep finishing ahead of Dario. It's as simple as that.”
Franchitti teammate Scott Dixon will start fifth and rookie James Hinchcliffe rounded-out the top six.
QUALIFYING: Indy Grand Prix of Sonoma
Position | Driver | Time | MPH |
1 | Will Power | 1:18.6017 | 105.479 |
2 | Helio Castroneves | 1:19.0916 | 104.825 |
3 | Ryan Briscoe | 1:19.1112 | 104.799 |
4 | Dario Franchitti | 1:19.1464 | 104.753 |
5 | Scott Dixon | 1:19.3892 | 104.432 |
6 | James Hinchcliffe | 1:19.4546 | 104.346 |
7 | Mike Conway | 1:18.9388 | 105.028 |
8 | Sebastien Bourdais | 1:18.9717 | 104.984 |
9 | EJ Viso | 1:19.0724 | 104.851 |
10 | Ana Beatriz | 1:19.1100 | 104.801 |
11 | Giorgio Pantano | 1:19.2408 | 104.628 |
12 | Alex Tagliani | 1:19.8032 | 103.891 |
13 | Graham Rahal | 1:19.3311 | 104.509 |
14 | Marco Andretti | 1:19.3717 | 104.455 |
15 | Martin Plowman | 1:19.3792 | 104.445 |
16 | Takuma Sato | 1:19.3836 | 104.440 |
17 | James Jakes | 1:19.4744 | 104.320 |
18 | Oriol Servia | 1:19.3955 | 104.424 |
19 | Ryan Hunter-Reay | 1:19.6402 | 104.103 |
20 | JR Hildebrand | 1:19.4654 | 104.332 |
21 | Tony Kanaan | 1:19.7270 | 103.990 |
22 | Simon Pagenaud | 1:19.5635 | 104.204 |
23 | Sebastian Saavedra | 1:19.7517 | 103.958 |
24 | Ho-Pin Tung | 1:19.5894 | 104.170 |
25 | Danica Patrick | 1:19.7854 | 103.914 |
26 | Charlie Kimball | 1:19.8349 | 103.849 |
27 | Ed Carpenter | 1:20.6269 | 102.829 |
28 | Vitor Meira | 1:20.1209 | 103.479 |