Mikhail Aleshin turned the fastest lap in practice into the fastest lap in qualifying his first pole in the Verizon IndyCar Series. "It's obviously very difficult to explain what I feel now. But it's a lot of emotions definitely. Maybe you cannot see it with my Russian face, but it's true," he quipped afterward. "I think the last part of the season has been really good, and we had really good progress. Just the whole team all together, me, everyone else. It's a team sport here, for sure. Every tiny thing is very important in the end result. So I'm definitely very, very happy to be here."

Aleshin two lap average of 220.445 mph bettered Josef Newgarden's average of 220.195 mph and Takuma Sato's 220.067 mph, with those three the only ones average above 220 mph on both laps. For Newgarden, i was a little frustrating given that he requested a last-minute change that may have hurt him in the end. "We rolled out with one thing and I was pushing my guys to do something different," he explained. "It's a team decision, whether it's their decision or mine, but I feel like I was pushing a little hard for something that wasn't the right thing. But we were close, we just needed that little bit."

Sato was elated to qualify third, his best oval performance of the year. "Very, very happy about our qualifying run. We had a very good baseline car. We tested here a couple weeks ago which helped massively and we gained a good understanding for the strong superspeedway package that Honda worked so hard on and it looks like we have a pretty strong car.

Helio Castroneves and Carlos Munoz completed the top five.

While Castroneves enjoyed a solid run in the top five, his title rival teammates struggled somewhat. Will Power could do no better than eighth while points leader Simon Pagenaud languished back in 14th after suffering from poor handling. "I was fighting an understeer situation in the Menards Chevrolet which made it difficult. Going out early didn't really help, either. We'll continue to work in practice later to get the car in a little better place for tomorrow,' he explained.

Of three drivers who crashed in practice, two of them, Juan Montoya and Charlie Kimball, made it out to qualifying. They qualified 15th (Montoya) and 16th (Kimball) respectively. Ryan Hunter-Reay did not make a qualifying run and will start 22nd.

Sunday's ABC Supply 500 rolls off at 3:00 EST.

Pocono