Aleshin wins his first IndyCar pole

Late cloud cover coincided with the runs of Takuma Sato, Helio Castroneves and Josef Newgarden, making the 2.5-mile tri-oval quicker late in the session. Yet Aleshin’s 220.445mph average held strong and presented him his second pole in his sophomore IndyCar season.

It also gave Schmidt Peterson Motorsports a sweep of poles on 2.5-mile superspeedways this year, as James Hinchcliffe took top spot for the 100^th Running of the Indianapolis 500.

Newgarden and Castroneves were comfortably the quickest Chevrolet runners in a session otherwise dominated by Honda runners. Sato’s AJ Foyt Racing-Honda split the Ed Carpenter and Team Penske entry and was the third of the cars to break into the 220mph zone.

Carlos Munoz and Indy 500 winner Alexander Rossi went fifth and seventh for Andretti Autosport, with Hinchcliffe sixth.

Although qualifying is largely irrelevant in a 500-mile race around such a wide track as Pocono Raceway, for the record Will Power topped the realistic 2016 title contenders in eighth, with Penske teammate Simon Pagenaud 14^th and Scott Dixon’s Chip Ganassi Racing-Chevrolet 19^th.

He will start ahead of only the Dale Coyne Racing drivers Conor Daly and Pippa Mann, as well as Ryan Hunter-Reay who was unable to take part following his shunt this morning.

Others who struck the wall in morning practice did make qualifying, however. Charlie Kimball will roll off 16^th, with Juan Pablo Montoya driving a “Frankenstein” collation of his Penske teammates’ body panels in 15^th.

IndyCar 2016 - Pocono - Qualifications
P.	N°	Driver	Team (Engine)	MPH
1	7	Mikhail Aleshin	Schmidt (H)	220.445
2	21	Josef Newgarden	Carpenter (C)	220.195
3	14	Takuma Sato	Foyt (H)	220.067
4	3	Helio Castroneves	Penske (C)	219.781
5	26	Carlos Muñoz	Andretti (H)	219.647
6	5	James Hinchcliffe	Schmidt (H)	219.463
7	98	Alexander Rossi	Andretti-Herta (H)	219.326
8	12	Will Power	Penske (C)	218.617
9	10	Tony Kanaan	Ganassi (C)	218.606
10	20	Ed Carpenter	Carpenter (C)	218.424
11	15	Graham Rahal	Rahal (H)	218.204
12	41	Jack Hawksworth	Foyt (H)	218.051
13	27	Marco Andretti	Andretti (H)	218.012
14	22	Simon Pagenaud	Penske (C)	217.721
15	2	Juan Pablo Montoya	Penske (C)	217.284
16	83	Charlie Kimball	Ganassi (C)	216.917
17	8	Max Chilton	Ganassi (C)	216.689
18	11	Sébastien Bourdais	KVSH (C)	216.263
19	9	Scott Dixon	Ganassi (C)	215.337
20	88	Conor Daly	Coyne (H)	214.757
21	19	Pippa Mann	Coyne (H)	211.267
22	28	Ryan Hunter-Reay	Andretti (H)	no time