Dario Franchitti won Honda's first pole of the 2013 season at Long Beach. The Scot out paced the most recent winner Ryan Hunter-Reay in the final moments of qualifying. Will Power came out in third ahead of Takuma Sato. Mike Conway will start fifth in his first and, as of now, only start of the 2013 season for Rahal-Letterman-Lanigan Racing. Points leader Helio Castroneves starts sixth.
For the second consecutive qualifying session, penalties were a huge factor. Scott Dixon brought out a red flag at the end of round one, group two, negating the Kiwi's two fastest lap times and relegating him to twenty-seventh on the starting grid. Dixon's penalty appeared to elevate Marco Andretti into round two but he penalized and relegated to twenty-sixth for blocking JR Hildebrand. These two penalties would open the door for Hildebrand to advance to round two, where Hildebrand finished in twelfth position. There was a third penalty issued to Oriol Serviá for getting into the tires after Dixon had spun in turn one. Serviá was originally was sent to the back but the penalty was rescinded for it was deemed Dixon had impeded the Catalan's progress. Serviá will start eighteenth.
James Hinchcliffe just missed out on the Firestone Fast Six and will start in seventh with Tony Kanaan starting next to him in a season-best eighth position. Charlie Kimball starts ninth. Kimball is coming off a fourth place finish last week at Barber. EJ Viso and Graham Rahal made their first appearances in the second round of qualifying this season. They will start tenth and eleventh respectively.
James Jakes and AJ Allmendinger with make up row seven. Allmendinger returns to Long Beach for the first time since 2006. Simon Pagenaud and Tristan Vautier will start seventeenth and nineteenth respectively. Vautier started sixth in the first two races of the season while Pagenaud has yet to make an appearance in the second round of qualifying. Simona de Silvestro starts twentieth with Sebastián Saavedra in twenty-first. This is the first time this season Saavedra will start behind his teammate Sébastien Bourdais. The Frenchman starts fifteenth.
This year's Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach will be 80 laps, five shorter than previous years in hopes prevent a fuel-mileage race.
IndyCar morning warm-up will take place at noon ET. NBC Sports Network will air the Indy Lights race at 3:00 p.m. ET, IndyCar pre-race at 4:00 p.m. ET with green flag at 4:45 p.m. ET. Forecast for today's race calls for 76 degrees Fahrenheit with zero chance of rain.
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