Carlos Munoz secured his first career pole and will lead way for Saturday night's Firestone 600 at Texas Motor Speedway. Munoz was the only driver to break the 217 mph barrier on both of his qualifying laps, averaging 217.137 mph.

The speed caught Munoz by surprise. "To be honest I didn't expect that speed," said the Indy 500 runner-up. "I thought we would do something around 216 mph, but I was happy with the speed we were doing. It's my first (IndyCar career) pole - I was looking at the (Verizon P1) hat and it looks really nice! I'm really happy for all of my team after Indy and for everything, I have to thank everyone."

Scott Dixon will start alongside Munoz on the front row. Dixon, last year's winner, expressed high confidence ahead of Saturday night's race. ""Huge credit to the Target team. The car is fast and I'm excited," said the man currently second in the championship. "The amount of lanes you can use and the different configurations you can run here in Texas is really cool. I'm fairly happy with the qualifying run but we just missed by a little bit. The car was surprisingly good to drive. In these situations, you trim out a lot - you're on the edge and if you miss by a little bit it can be a bit of a handful. But the balance is really good."

Helio Castroneves, Takuma Sato, and Josef Newgarden completed the top five. The Firestone 600 rolls of 8:00 pm Saturday night.

Texas Motor Speedway