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| Can Sebastián Saavedra Turn His First Career Pole into His First Career Win? |
Can the narrative from qualifying continue? Sebastián Saavedra took a surprise pole position for the inaugural Grand Prix of Indianapolis in a wet session. The Colombian has never started better than sixth in his career and has never started better than ninth on a road/street circuit. His best career finish is eighth at Baltimore last year. Joining Saavedra on row one is rookie Jack Hawksworth, his first career front row start. The Brit has started three of his four career races in the top ten but is still looking for his first career top ten finish.
Ryan Hunter-Reay was all set to start on pole position before causing the red flag that ended the qualifying session and forced the 2012 IndyCar champion to lose his two fastest laps. His third fastest lap however was good enough for third on the starting grid. Simon Pagenaud will start fourth. He ran the fastest lap in the dry, a 69.6716 second lap.
Will Power and Scott Dixon start on row three. Power leads the points while the defending IndyCar champion Dixon is looking for his first win of 2014. Sébastien Bourdais starts seventh. The Frenchman won the inaugural sports car Brickyard Grand Prix at Indianapolis two years ago. Juan Pablo Montoya will start eighth. Tony Kanaan starts ninth and his fellow Brazilian Hélio Castroneves rounds out the top ten. Castroneves looks to become the tenth different driver to win an IndyCar race on their birthday. He turns 39 years old today. James Hinchcliffe starts eleventh with Graham Rahal recording his best start of 2014 in twelfth.
Marco Andretti barely missed out on round two and will have to start thirteenth. He is joined by Ryan Briscoe on row seven. Honda takes the next eight spots on the grid. Josef Newgarden finds himself starting fifteenth with Takuma Sato in sixteenth. Dale Coyne Racing swept row nine with Carlos Huertas starting ahead of Justin Wilson in seventeenth. Rookies Carlos Muñoz and Martin Plowman round out the top twenty.
Franck Montagny makes his IndyCar return in twenty-first. His last race was Sonoma 2009 where he finished twentieth. Oriol Servià starts twenty-second. Charlie Kimball starts twenty-third. The Californian has the worst average start among the full-time IndyCar drivers at 19.75 through four races. Mike Conway starts twenty-fourth. He has struggled ever since his Long Beach victory with a twenty-first starting position at Barber and a fourteenth place finish. Mikhail Aleshin rounds out the field in twenty-fifth. The Russian was set to advance to round two before being penalized for interference.
Coverage for the 2014 Grand Prix of Indianapolis begins at 3:30 p.m. ET on ABC. Green flag will be at 3:50 p.m. ET. The Grand Prix of Indianapolis will feature a standing start.
