Will Power claimed his second pole in a row in a session that came down to the final minutes on the Streets of Toronto.
Power’s Team Penske teammate Juan Pablo Montoya led much of the 10 minute session and looked solid to take his fifth pole of the season. As the clock ticked down, Simon Pagenaud rose to the occasion and bumped the Columbian off the top spot. Power then needed no further motivation and responded with a lap of 59.5920 to dispose of his teammate by nearly two tenths of a second.
“Starting on the pole is great to keep out of any messes, and obviously IndyCar races are never straightforward so it’s just awesome to get the pole. It’s a long (race) day and we’ll see what we can do,” said Power.
“You’ve got to drive around here. It’s all man-handling because you’ve got those slippery surfaces in the middle of the corners, so you’ve got to be on the wheel a lot.”
Pagenaud claimed his second front row start of the season while Montoya completed a Penske 1-2-3 sweep. 2013 Toronto winner Scott Dixon logged the fourth quickest time while last year’s Toronto winner Sebastien Bourdais completed the top five.
Luca Filippi made his first Firestone Fast Six of the year and qualified sixth place after just logging a handful of laps. Helio Castroneves was bumped out of the Fast Six by power by a scant .0018 seconds and will start 7th, the worst start of the season by the Brazilian. He will be flanked by Takuma Sato, the fastest Honda on the fourth row and rounding out the top 10 are Tony Kanaan and Graham Rahal.
No Andretti Autosport cars advanced to Q2 and was led by Carlos Munoz in 13th and followed by Ryan Hunter-Reay in 16th and Marco Andretti in 18th. Andretti was on a hot lap on red tires before the session came to an abrupt end when Rodolfo Gonzalez crashed in turn 1 and brought out the yellow flag.
