Saturday, April 12, 2014

Hunter-Reay Takes Long Beach Pole

In a session that saw Ganassi and Penske get shut out of the final round of qualifying, Andretti Autosport swept the front row for the 40th Grand Prix of Long Beach.

Ryan Hunter-Reay won his sixth career pole with a time of 67.8219 seconds. He held off his teammate James Hinchcliffe by 0.1184 seconds. Sébastien Bourdais was the top Chevrolet team in third. He was 0.1361 seconds back. He is joined by Josef Newgarden on row two as the Tennesseean was 0.1878 seconds back. Rookie Jack Hawksworth starts fifth with Simon Pagenaud rounding out row three.

Scott Dixon starts seventh with Marco Andretti starting a career-best eighth at Long Beach. Helio Castroneves starts ninth with Justin Wilson rounding out the top ten. Carlos Muñoz starts eleventh for his Long Beach debut while Oriol Servià made it out of round one in his first qualifying session of the season and will start twelfth.

Tony Kanaan will start thirteenth. Will Power surprisingly failed to make it out of round one and will join Kanaan on row seven in fourteenth.   Defending Long Beach winner Takuma Sato will start fifteenth and will be joined by fellow former Long Beach winner Juan Pablo Montoya on row eight. Mike Conway will start seventeenth next to Ganassi's Ryan Briscoe in eighteenth.

Charlie Kimball starts nineteenth and Mikhail Aleshin will start twentieth on his Long Beach debut.  Carlos Huertas starts twenty-first. Fellow Colombian Sebastián Saavedra starts twenty-second and Graham Rahal rounds out the field in twenty-third.

Tomorrow's coverage of the 40th Grand Prix of Long Beach begins at 4:00 p.m. ET on NBCSN with green flag at 4:50 p.m. ET.