Castroneves Takes Pole, Power to Start 21st

Qualifying for Saturday night's MAVTV 500 threw a couple surprises at the Verizon IndyCar Series. While Helio Castroneves took pole, teammate and championship leader Will Power stumbled mightily after leading opening practice. The Australian driver will start 21st and have to come from the back of the pack. However, he was not concerned. "With the starting position, I'd rather start at the very front or the very back to stay out of trouble early on," Power said. "It's obviously all about the race; it's very long and we'll be racing in different conditions."

Castroneves, meanwhile, secured a bonus point for pole and will be flanked by Juan Pablo Montoya. ""It ain't over; it's just beginning," said Castroneves, who took his third pole of the season. "Our job is to be aggressive over the 500 miles and finish where we started."

The three-time Indy 500 winner added, "Now, we need to keep going. We are starting up front but it is a long race and we know what we need to do to make it happen. This is the first step. Now we need to make sure we end up where we start tomorrow night."

Josef Newgarden continued his strong form by qualifying third. Yet, he was visibly disappointed and believed a different line choice on his first lap would resulted in pole. "If you look at our second lap it was so much quicker than our first," he explained. "And I think our first lap would have been quicker if I did a better job with my line choice in Turn 1 and 2. It's always hindsight when you come in after a run and you think 'If I would have just done this different maybe we would have been sitting in a different spot and today I think we would."

Takuma Sato and Scott Dixon completed the top five. Other notable performances came from Mikhail Aleshin (eighth), Ryan Hunter-Reay (ninth), Simon Pagenaud (13th), Ed Carpenter (14th), and Marco Andretti (18th), the latter two drivers struggling to find speed.

Pagenaud, who has an outside shot at the championship, admitted that his Schmidt Peterson team put little attention on qualifying. "We didn't really focus on qualifying. The focus was to be really good in the race and we were really strong here on Wednesday in practice so I feel good. I feel like we have a car to go forward, to fight for the win. Whatever happens in qualifying is not that important. We've seen it last year," he asserted.

Tomorrow night's MAVTV 500 will roll off at 7:20 p.m. local time (10:20 p.m. ET).

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