Ed Carpenter Shocks Field for Pole in Kentucky

Ed Carpenter nearly pulled the upset last year at Kentucky, coming home a close second to Ryan Briscoe. This year, he has set himself up for another run at his first win, as he stunned the field to take pole for Saturday night's Kentucky Indy 300. The part-timer knocked off Penske's Will Power late in the session, who was easily ahead of the rest of the field at that point.

Dan Wheldon, a teammate to Carpenter this weekend, followed up his teammate's performance with third, with Scott Dixon Mutoh rounding out the top five.

Carpenter was elated to grab his first career pole. "I love this track and this area," he said. "I won one of my national midget races in Louisville and won a lot of sprint car races in Salem, Ind. The southern Indiana/Kentucky region seems to be good to me for some reason. The way I kind of look at it, I’m trying to keep my career going so every minute I’m in the car. I have to do the best that I can and get the most out of it. I’m just having a lot of fun right now; the Panther team is going a great job in addition with the Vision Racing part of it. It’s just a lot of fun."

Power wasn't completely disappointed, especially with title rival Dario Franchitti struggling; while Power is on the front row, Franchitti will have to start mid-pack in 11th. "My qualifying run was very straightforward. This was a typical oval run with lots of wind and low grip," said a matter-of-fact Power, who leads Franchitti by 23 points heading into this weekend. "It is good for the #12 Team Verizon car to start on the front row. I need a good result on a 1.5-mile oval this season and it's important that we finish ahead of Dario (Franchitti) to keep the points lead. I feel that qualifying is very important but this track allows for passing and a lot can happen during the race."


The Andretti Autosport drivers suffered one of their worst sessions of the year, with no drivers cracking the top 10 and Ryan Hunter-Reay crashing on his run.

"We took a pretty aggressive approach to qualifying," explained Hunter-Reay, who will start last tomorrow night. "The track gripped up and definitely got looser. That, combined with the changes we made - the car was just too loose. It gave me a little warning sign down in turns three and four, and then coming into (turn) one it did a big wiggle and that was it."

Tony Kanaan couldn't hide his frustration at the end of day, as he back in 26th, his worst start since Indianapolis. "I don't know what to say. After Ryan (Hunter-Reay) crashed, we made some changes to my car and we probably overreacted. We've got a big hole to dig out of tomorrow night."

On the flip side, the Conquest cars of Bertrand Baguette and Tomas Scheckter impressed, taking sixth and 10th respectively. "I had a good qualifying run. I must admit I was a bit surprised with our speed. It's faster than I thought it would be because we didn't do any qualifying runs in practice. I made a small mistake on my second lap that cost us some speed so I didn't think at the end of my qualifying laps that we would end up P6 on the grid. As a team, we placed both cars in the top ten and beat out teams like Ganassi and Penske, so that is very encouraging for us. We might be a small team compared to others but we're doing great things."

Scheckter was equally as happy. "I'm really happy with my qualifying position. We only did race runs in practice but we trimmed a lot of downforce out ahead of qualifying and the Conquest guys did a great job to give me a qualifying car like that. I'm also really happy that Norcote is on board this weekend and to give them a top ten on the grid for their first race is great. As I said, we worked on our race setup in practice and had a good car so hopefully we can keep it up tomorrow."

Tomorrow night's race is due to roll off at 8:45 EST.

Full results of the 1st qualifying session on Kentucky Speedway