Friday, July 11, 2014

Dixon Leads Ganassi 1-2 in Iowa Qualifying

Scott Dixon won pole at Iowa, his first of 2014.
Scott Dixon and Tony Kanaan will lead the field to the green flag tomorrow night as the Ganassi duo qualified first and second for the Iowa Corn Indy 300. Dixon ran a two-lap average of 186.256 MPH, nearly four-tenths of a mile per hour faster than Kanaan. It is Dixon's third career pole position at Iowa. Hélio Castroneves and Ryan Briscoe made it a Chevrolet 1-2-3-4, both within a mile per hour of Dixon.

Carlos Muñoz was the fastest Honda in qualifying for the second consecutive week and rounded out the top five at 184.968 MPH. Sébastien Bourdais qualified sixth with Charlie Kimball making it six Chevrolets in the top seven. Marco Andretti was eighth fastest, joining his teammate Muñoz as the lone Hondas in the top ten. Will Power and Ed Carpenter qualified ninth and tenth.

Schmidt Peterson Hamilton Motorsport teammates Simon Pagenaud and Mikhail Aleshin qualified eleventh and twelfth for the second consecutive week and lead three consecutive rows of Hondas. The Andretti Autosport teammates and last two Iowa winners Ryan Hunter-Reay and James Hinchcliffe qualified thirteenth and fourteenth at 183.747 MPH and 183.348 MPH with Graham Rahal and Takuma Sato fifteenth and sixteenth fastest at 183.201 MPH and 183.089 MPH.

Sebastián Saavedra was 0.006 MPH slower than Sato in seventeenth. Justin Wilson was eighteenth with the most recent winner in the Verizon IndyCar Series Juan Pablo Montoya nineteenth, the slowest Chevrolet at 182.317 MPH. Jack Hawksworth returns after missing Pocono in twentieth with Josef Newgarden and Carlos Huertas rounding out the field. Huertas was the slowest at 177.849 MPH.

Coverage for tomorrow's Iowa Corn Indy 300 begins at 8:00 p.m. ET on NBCSN with green flag scheduled for 8:50 p.m. ET.