Two years ago, during his first IZOD IndyCar Series season with Team Penske, Ryan Briscoe started and finished third on the 1.5-mile Texas Motor Speedway oval. Last year, he started second and was runner-up to teammate Helio Castroneves.
Briscoe is hopeful that he’s trending June 5 in the Firestone 550K.
He earned the PEAK Performance Pole Award with a four-lap average speed of 215.273 mph (1 minute, 37.3275 seconds) in the No. 6 Team Penske car.
“I think we can just call it a win and not go out (June 5),” joked Briscoe. “I wish. It’s a great feeling to get the pole here. Thanks Dario for falling off that little bit on the last lap.” IndyCar.com
“It’s a great feeling to get the pole here. I have to thank Dario for falling off a bit on his last lap. It’s going to be a long race, and hopefully we can keep the No. 6 Team Penske car up front,” Briscoe said.
Newly crowned Indianapolis 500 champion Dario Franchitti of Scotland qualified second-fastest.
He’ll be hoping to continue the trend that saw the last two Indy 500 winners also win at Texas in the same year. That was Castroneves last year and New Zealand’s Scott Dixon in 2008.
Penske driver Will Power of Australia starts third, ahead of Dixon and Castroneves. AFP
“I am actually a little surprised that we ran as quick as we did because in practice the qualifying setup wasn’t anywhere close to that,” said Franchitti, driving the No. 10 Target Chip Ganassi car. “The guys on the Target team did a really good job coming up with some tweaks on the car and it was really close on the last lap. I was doing my thing in the car and I didn’t know how exactly close we were to Briscoe’s time but I guess it was pretty close in the end.”
The top five qualifiers were separated by 0.3912 of a second and the top 10 by 0.6777 of a second. Hideki Mutoh (214.380) and Danica Patrick (214.098) will be on Row 4, while Mario Moraes (213.800) and Marco Andretti (213.785) will be on the fifth row. IndyCar.com
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