Kanaan takes Las Vegas Indy Car Pole – Sports Car Illustrated
Tony Kanaan will start the last IndyCar race of the year from the pole after posting a two-lap average of 222.078 mph on the 1.5-mile Las Vegas Motor Speedway oval to earn his first PEAK Performance Pole Award of the season and 15th of his IZOD IndyCar Series career. He’s the seventh different pole winner this season.
”It feels awesome.” said Kanaan, “It has been awhile. I guess I’ve got to do more Ironmans on my weekends off. I’m extremely happy. I can’t thank the GEICO-KV guys enough. We had such an awful race at Kentucky that we needed to turn it around. They went back to the shop to massage that car as much as they could and it paid off.”
Driver’s Championship contenders Will Power and Dario Franchitti will be starting next to each other from the uncharacteristic position of Row 9.
Ed Carpenter, the Kentucky Indy 300 winner, driving the No. 67 Dollar General car for Sarah Fisher Racing will be on Row 2 with Alex Tagliani in the No. 98 William Rast/Bowers & Wilkins car for Bryan Herta Autosport with Curb Agajanian/Sam Schmidt.
Five different teams are represented in the top 5, and eight in the top 10.
Dan Wheldon, who will split $5 million with Go Daddy INDYCAR Challenge sweepstakes winner Ann Babenco of New Jersey if he can win the race from the rear of the 34-car field, warmed up with a two-lap average of 218.410 mph. Sunoco Rookie of the Year contenders James Hinchcliffe, who leads JR Hildebrand by six points, will start one spot apart.
Verizon Team Penske’s Power enters the 200-lap race 18 points behind Franchitti entering the season finale. Seventeenth ties Power’s worst start of the season which was in Milwaukee.
Not including the two bonus points in play for leading the most laps, Franchitti wraps up his third consecutive series title with a top-three finish no matter Power’s result. Power needs to win the race if Franchitti finishes fourth through seventh. Prospective bonus points come into play the further down the finishing order.
The race starts at 3:45 p.m.and will be broadcast on ABC (Live).
1 Tony Kanaan2 Oriol Servia3 Ed Carpenter4 Alex Tagliani5 Ryan Briscoe6 Marco Andretti7 Ryan Hunter-Reay8 Graham Rahal9 Danica Patrick10 Mike Conway11 Helio Castroneves12 Wade Cunningham13 Scott Dixon14 James Hinchcliffe15 JR Hildebrand16 Takuma Sato17 Will Power18 Dario Franchitti19 Sebastian Saavedra20 Alex Lloyd
10/15/11