Pagenaud edges Power to grab sixth pole of the year

The Frenchman, who despite leading the championship hasn’t won a race since the Grand Prix of Indianapolis in May, reminded everyone why he’s top of the points table with a drive that earned Team Penske its 244^th pole position in Indy car competition.

Pagenaud completed his run despite suffering severe pain in his lower back, which he's been struggling with since first practice. Power, meanwhile, produced the fastest final sector but "screwed up the Keyhole", which is the fast Turn 2 hairpin.

Best of the rest was Josef Newgarden whose Ed Carpenter Racing-Chevrolet was a quarter-second off Pagenaud’s best, but two-tenths clear of Ryan Hunter-Reay’s Andretti Autosport-Honda.

Another Honda driver to reach the Firestone Fast Six was last year’s Mid-Ohio winner Graham Rahal, who wheeled his #15 Rahal Letterman Lanigan car to sixth on the grid. Top Chip Ganassi Racing-Chevy car was the impressive Charlie Kimball whose sole IndyCar victory came here three years ago.

Row 4, like Row 1, will be all Penske, as Helio Castroneves and Juan Pablo Montoya failed to escape Q2.

Rain sprinkles in the closing stages of Q2 appeared to slow the track temporarily before drying again, but not before championship contender and Mid-Ohio demi-god Scott Dixon had pulled in, and the #9 Ganassi car tumbled to 11^th in the order. Other drivers to suffer from that late surge from their rivals were the Schmidt Peterson Motorsports-Hondas of James Hinchcliffe and Mikhail Aleshin, who held the top two spots for most of Q2 but dropped to ninth and 10^th at the end of the session.

Chip Ganassi Racing’s Max Chilton was unlucky to get bumped in the dying seconds of Q1G1, and the same went for his teammate Tony Kanaan. TK has looked just two tenths off teammate all weekend, but when it mattered, on soft red tires, he was four tenths behind, and he was dumped out of the Top 12 by a great run by Andretti Autosport-Honda’s Alexander Rossi.

Sebastien Bourdais was a surprise loser in Q1, and the KVSH Racing driver, who started from pole here just two years ago, will line up 16^th tomorrow.

Mid-Ohio Qualifying
P.	N°	Driver	Team (Engine)	Time/deficit
1	22	Simon Pagenaud	Penske (C)	1:03.8700
2	12	Will Power	Penske (C)	1:03.9381
3	21	Josef Newgarden	Carpenter (C)	1:04.1200
4	28	Ryan Hunter-Reay	Andretti (H)	1:04.3265
5	83	Charlie Kimball	Ganassi (C)	1:04.3644
6	15	Graham Rahal	Rahal (H)	1:04.4697
7	3	Helio Castroneves	Penske (C)	1:04.4300
8	2	Juan Pablo Montoya	Penske (C)	1:04.5141
9	5	James Hinchcliffe	Schmidt (H)	1:04.5796
10	7	Mikhail Aleshin	Schmidt (H)	1:04.6084
11	9	Scott Dixon	Ganassi (C)	1:04.6554
12	98	Alexander Rossi	Andretti-Herta (H)	1:04.8082
13	8	Max Chilton	Ganassi (C)	1:04.7752
14	10	Tony Kanaan	Ganassi (C)	1:04.5885
15	26	Carlos Muñoz	Andretti (H)	1:04.8621
16	11	Sébastien Bourdais	KVSH (C)	1:04.5967
17	41	Jack Hawksworth	Foyt (H)	1:05.0196
18	19	R.C. Enerson	Coyne (H)	1:04.6576
19	20	Spencer Pigot	Carpenter (C)	1:05.1891
20	14	Takuma Sato	Foyt (H)	1:04.8354
21	27	Marco Andretti	Andretti (H)	1:05.1997
22	18	Conor Daly	Coyne (H)	1:05.1098