PEAK PERFORMANCE POLE QUALIFYING NOTES:
This is Ryan Briscoe’s third PEAK Performance Pole Award of the season and the seventh pole of his IndyCar Series career. His most recent pole came at Watkins Glen in July.
Justin Wilson qualified second, matching his season-best start. He also had front row starts at St. Petersburg and Watkins Glen.
Dario Franchitti remains the only driver to have qualified for every Firestone Fast Six session this season.
PEAK PERFORMANCE POLE QUALIFYING QUOTES:
RYAN BRISCOE (No. 6 Team Penske, PEAK Performance Pole Award winner): “Mid-Ohio has treated Team Penske well. It’s a lot of fun around this track. It’s been tricky conditions so far with the rain and some patches in the corner. It changes the balance of the car from corner to corner. The red Firestones in final qualifying were awesome. A lot of grip, and as usual, a lot of fun to drive. The team has a lot of history here. We love the track. All the credit to the engineers and mechanics at Team Penske. They give us a fantastic car to drive and make my job a whole lot easier.”
JUSTIN WILSON (No. 18 Z-Line Designs, qualified second): “It went well. The car was working well and everyone on the team has done a great job. I was hoping we could get the Z-line Design Furniture car on the front row, if not the pole, and we missed it by a fraction. That’s frustrating, to know that your that close and it didn’t quite happen. This is hopefully a repeat of Watkins Glen.”
SCOTT DIXON (No. 9 Target Chip Ganassi Racing, qualified third): “It was alright. We set the overall fast time, but are starting third so it’s frustrating. It just shows that the qualifying now is time management and strategy. I’m happy with the speed of the car. We definitely have the speed to win. We’ve just got to try to jump another few cars, which is going to be tough on this track.
GRAHAM RAHAL: (No. 02 McDonald’s Racing Team, qualified fourth): “The McDonalds car felt pretty good all day. We were just trying to squeeze as much out of those red tires as we could. It took us a little while, that’s for sure, to get to that point but I think at the end it felt pretty good. We didn’t have new reds and some of the other guys did and we were just lacking that little bit. If we had a little more grip, I think we could have been awfully close to pole. That’s what I would have loved, obviously, with this being my hometown but that’s how it goes.”
HELIO CASTRONEVES (No. 3 Team Penske, qualified fifth): “I don’t think I would have been able to more than I did. It’s a shame because we wanted to be on the front row like last year, but Ryan did a great job (pole). He saved a new set (of Firestone alternate tires) for the last qualifying, which paid off for him. We do have a very good car; it seems to be very close and it should be a lot of fun.”
DARIO FRANCHITTI (Target Chip Ganassi Racing, qualified sixth): “We’re missing just a little bit on the road courses right now. The street courses have been good, so we have to keep working on that. I think we have a good race car. It seems to work OK on the (primary Firestone tires). I’m a little disappointed; we’ve made every (Firestone) Fast Six this year but we need to move up in it.”
RYAN HUNTER-REAY (No. 14 ABC Supply/A.J Foyt Racing, qualified seventh): “We worked together well as a team this weekend , we made the ABC Supply car better from yesterday to today. We made the right changes on it. I did the driving and A.J. did the right changes and together we got it up to 7th. I wish we could have made the fast six cause it was close but that’s how it goes. We’re glad to get the team its best start this year and now we can work on getting its best finish.”
TONY KANAAN (No. 11 Team 7-Eleven, qualified eighth): “We have been working really hard to turn this situation around and we are making small steps. If you look back to Edmonton, we started 17th and 18th; this weekend we have four cars in the top 12. I was disappointed because I thought we had a chance at making the Fast Six, but the other teams made better progress throughout the sessions that we are able to.
E.J. VISO (No. 13 PDVSA/HVM Racing, qualified ninth): “We had a pretty good qualifying effort. I’m very happy that every session we went out, we went a step forward. There’s definitely an improvement in the car. I used the maximum out of what I had in my hands, and that’s pretty good for me and for the team. From here, we have a pretty good base and we just need to start working a little harder in order to get into the third round of qualifying. It’s another four or five tenths that we need, and those are the difficult ones.”
PAUL TRACY (No. 5 Azul Tequila/Votorantim/KVRT, qualified 10th): “The Azul/Votorantim/ KV Racing Technology team had an OK qualifying session. It’s just super competitive out there. We made it into the top-12. I didn’t think we would advance into the Firestone Fast Six, but I thought we would be in the top-10 and we ended up 10th. We still need to do some work on the car to make it better for the race. I want to thank Mario again for this opportunity. I just want to have a good race tomorrow for him and his family.”
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