Morning Warm-Up: Pocono 2014

Juan Pablo Montoya looks for his first IndyCar victory in 5040 days at Pocono

Juan Pablo Montoya starts on an IndyCar pole position for the first time since Surfers Paradise in 2000. This is the Colombian second pole at Pocono Raceway as Montoya started on pole for the NASCAR race at Pocono in July 2012. He finished twentieth that day. Montoya is joined on the front row by his Penske teammate Will Power and the top qualifying rookie, top qualifying Honda driver and fellow Colombian Carlos Muñoz. Power started fourth and finished fourth last year at Pocono while Muñoz won the Indy Lights race at the track last year.

Row two features three Honda drivers. Takuma Sato starts fourth. He is looking for his first top ten finish on a track larger than a mile since finishing seventh at Fontana in 2012. Marco Andretti starts fifth. Andretti led 88 laps last year from pole position before fuel mileage dropped the Pennsylvania-native to tenth. James Hinchcliffe starts sixth. The Canadian had an accident in turn one, lap one last year and is still looking to complete his first race lap at Pocono Raceway.

Hélio Castroneves starts seventh. He finished eighth last year at Pocono. Tony Kanaan starts eighth next to his fellow Brazilian. Kanaan led 15 laps last year before an unscheduled pit stop for a front wing damage derailed his hopes of the Triple Crown. This year's Triple Crown hopeful Ryan Hunter-Reay will start on the outside of row three. The lone driver to complete the Triple Crown was Al Unser in 1978. Unser started 10th that year on his way to a Pocono victory.

Ryan Briscoe rounds out the top ten. He finished fourteenth last year driving for Panther Racing. Simon Pagenaud and Mikhail Aleshin round out row four. The Schmidt Peterson Hamilton Motorsports teammates finished 1-2 in Houston 2 last week. Pagenaud has finished in the top five in six of ten races so far in 2014. Aleshin led a lap in his Indianapolis 500 debut before finishing twenty-first and finished seventh at Texas last month.

Ed Carpenter starts thirteenth. Carpenter will become the 45th driver to join the 150 career starts club when he takes the green flag. He is looking for his fourth career victory on his fourth different track. In the middle of row five will be Graham Rahal. In 28 starts on ovals 1.5 miles or greater, Rahal has amassed five top fives and eleven top tens. Scott Dixon starts fifteenth. Dixon won from seventeenth last year, the furtherest back a winner has ever come from at Pocono.

Justin Wilson starts sixteenth with Charlie Kimball in seventeenth. Both drivers finished in the top ten last year with Wilson in seventh and Kimball in second as Ganassi drivers finished 1-2-3 for the first time in team history. Sébastien Bourdais starts on the outside of eight. He finished seventh in this year's Indianapolis 500 and is coming off back-to-back top fives at Houston last weekend.

Bourdais' KV teammate Sebastián Saavedra start nineteenth next to fellow Colombian and Houston 1 winner Carlos Huertas. Josef Newgarden will round out the field in twenty-first position. Jack Hawksworth was scheduled to start twenty-second after an accident in second practice. His team, Bryan Herta Autosport, has decided to withdraw the car and focus on repairs necessary for competing next Saturday night at Iowa.

NBCSN' coverage of the Pocono 500 begins at noon ET with green flag at 1:10 p.m. ET.