James Davison scores his first pole of the season at 'The Glen'

In a very exciting fight for pole James Davison has secured the top spot on the grid for Saturday’s Indy Lights race at Watkins Glen. The Vision Racing driver was a tenth of a second faster than Sebastian Saavedra, who will join Davison on the front row. James Hinchcliffe and Charlie Kimball will form the second row, the difference between both drivers was only one ten thousands of a second.

After some rain had hit the track earlier in the afternoon, the qualifying took place under cloudy skies with some times a bit of sun, with temperatures around 71F/21C.

The qualifying was off to a bad start. Just one minute after the green flag was waved the practice had to be stopped when Gustavo Yacaman’s car stalled on track with an electrical problem. Once that incident was cleared, the session barely got underway again before the yellow flag waved again, this time caused by Stefan Wilson, who lost his left front wheel due to a technical problem.

Once green, the fight for fast lap times started immediately. At first only James Davison, Sebastian Saavedra and JR Hildebrand appeared to have a shot at the pole, but later in the practice James Hinchcliffe and Charlie Kimball joined the fight for the best starting positions.

With about ten minutes to go Davison drove a very quick lap, which was four tenths faster than last year’s pole of Franck Perera. While the Australian driver was watching in the pits, his competitors tried to bump Davison off the pole in the final minutes , but in the end nobody was able to improve enough to catch him.

The Indy Lights cars will take the green flag Saturday afternoon for the Corning 100 at 1 pm (ET), while the IndyCar Series will have their first practice at 'The Glen’ at 10am.