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Sunday, 01 May 2011 04:00 |
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Page 1 of 2  Australian Will Power earned his fourth consecutive PEAK Performance Pole Award of the season and gave Penske Racing its 200th Indy car pole in qualifications for the Itaipava Sao Paulo Indy 300 presented by Nestle.
Power, driving the #12 Verizon Team Penske car, set the track record of 1 minute, 21.8958 seconds with three minutes left in the 10 minute Firestone Fast Six shoot-out on the 2.536 mile, 11 turn street circuit.
Like at Long Beach two weeks earlier, Ryan Hunter-Reay will join Power on the front row, they finished 1-2 in the inaugural IZOD IndyCar Series race in Brazil, with Power starting the 2010 season with the victory.
Power said: "What a fantastic job they did repaving the track, and I believe it now sets the standard for street courses. The second session for us was a little tight, I was P5 with one lap to go, and I put a lap together at the end to advance. In the Fast Six we were very comfortable and gave it everything we had."
Scott Dixon and Ryan Briscoe will share Row 2, while Graham Rahal and Dario Franchitti will be on the third row for the 75 lap race.
Drivers will have 15 pushes of the Honda overtake assist, an ECU software alteration employed by Honda Performance Development, each lasting 22 seconds during the race.
It is activated by the driver via a button on the steering wheel and provides an extra 200 RPM, about 10 horsepower, to the Honda Indy V8 engine. Parameters are updated before each race weekend to meet the circuit layout.
There is a 10 second recovery period between pushes with one overtake assist push available for the warm-up session on Sunday morning.
The dry weather tires for this weekend are the street course primary, which is a new spec for 2011 and used on the streets of St. Petersburg and Long Beach earlier this year. The red wall alternate tires are the same spec as used at St. Pete in March.
The alternate tire program, part of the IZOD IndyCar Series since 2009, calls for a second tire specification at road/street courses using the same construction as the primary specification but with a softer tread compound to provide more grip and faster lap times while trading off compound durability for those shorter term advantages.
PEAK PERFORMANCE POLE QUALIFYING NOTES:
- Will Power claimed his fourth pole of 2011 and the 19th pole of his Indy car career. It is his fourth consecutive pole to start the season after he claimed the PEAK Performance Pole Award at St. Petersburg, Barber and Long Beach.
- Power's pole is the 200th all time Indy car pole for Team Penske.
- Ryan Hunter-Reay qualified second, matching his season best qualifying performance. He also qualified second for the Long Beach race.
- Power and Hunter-Reay finished first and second, respectively, in the inaugural Sao Paulo race in 2010.
- Scott Dixon qualified third for the third time this season. He also qualified third at St. Petersburg and Barber.
- Graham Rahal qualified fifth and Sebastien Bourdais qualified 12th, their best qualifying performance of 2011.
- Helio Castroneves (7th) was the best qualified driver among the Brazilians in the field.
- James Hinchcliffe qualified 11th, the highest qualifying Sunoco Rookie of the Year candidate.
PEAK PERFORMANCE POLE QUALIFYING RESULTS:
| Pos. |
N° |
Driver |
Car |
Time |
Speed |
| 1. |
12 |
Will Power |
Dallara-Honda |
1'21.8958 |
111.478 |
| 2. |
28 |
Ryan Hunter-Reay |
Dallara-Honda |
1'22.2975 |
110.934 |
| 3. |
9 |
Scott Dixon |
Dallara-Honda |
1'22.3620 |
110.847 |
| 4. |
6 |
Ryan Briscoe |
Dallara-Honda |
1'22.3937 |
110.805 |
| 5. |
38 |
Graham Rahal |
Dallara-Honda |
1'22.4970 |
110.666 |
| 6. |
10 |
Dario Franchitti |
Dallara-Honda |
1'22.6103 |
110.514 |
| 7. |
3 |
Helio Castroneves |
Dallara-Honda |
1'22.6283 |
110.490 |
| 8. |
22 |
Justin Wilson |
Dallara-Honda |
1'22.6471 |
110.465 |
| 9. |
27 |
Mike Conway |
Dallara-Honda |
1'22.6986 |
110.396 |
| 10. |
5 |
Takuma Sato |
Dallara-Honda |
1'22.7379 |
110.344 |
| 11. |
06 |
James Hinchcliffe |
Dallara-Honda |
1'22.8450 |
110.201 |
| 12. |
19 |
Sebastien Bourdais |
Dallara-Honda |
1'22.9084 |
110.117 |
| 13. |
78 |
Simona de Silvestro |
Dallara-Honda |
1'23.6807 |
109.100 |
| 14. |
14 |
Vitor Meira |
Dallara-Honda |
1'23.3196 |
109.573 |
| 15. |
26 |
Marco Andretti |
Dallara-Honda |
1'23.7682 |
108.986 |
| 16. |
2 |
Oriol Servia |
Dallara-Honda |
1'23.4015 |
109.466 |
| 17. |
7 |
Danica Patrick |
Dallara-Honda |
1'24.0967 |
108.561 |
| 18. |
83 |
Charlie Kimball |
Dallara-Honda |
1'23.7126 |
109.059 |
| 19. |
17 |
Raphael Matos |
Dallara-Honda |
1'24.1890 |
108.442 |
| 20. |
77 |
Alex Tagliani |
Dallara-Honda |
1'23.7801 |
108.971 |
| 21. |
82 |
Tony Kanaan |
Dallara-Honda |
1'24.2205 |
108.401 |
| 22. |
4 |
JR Hildebrand |
Dallara-Honda |
1'23.8443 |
108.888 |
| 23. |
34 |
Sebastian Saavedra |
Dallara-Honda |
1'24.2963 |
108.304 |
| 24. |
18 |
James Jakes |
Dallara-Honda |
1'23.8482 |
108.882 |
| 25. |
24 |
Ana Beatriz |
Dallara-Honda |
1'24.8246 |
107.629 |
| 26. |
59 |
EJ Viso |
Dallara-Honda |
No time |
No speed |
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