Castroneves captures IndyCar Long Beach pole

Brazilian Helio Castroneves will start from pole in Sunday's IndyCar Grand Prix of Long Beach after a record-setting lap in final qualifying.

The Team Penske driver became the second pilot Saturday to lower the track record with his run of 1min 6.6294sec in the Fast Six final phase of qualifying in the California sun.

The record for the 1.968-mile (3.17 km) road circuit configuration, first used in 2000, had been set by Sebastien Bourdais at 1:06.882 back in 2006, when the Frenchman went on to win the race.

Brazilian Tony Kanaan broke that mark in the first round of qualifying, with a time of 1:06.7442. But Kanaan failed to advance out of the second round of qualifying into the Fast Six section that determines the top spots on the starting grid.

Castroneves and Penske found some more speed to put him in prime position to battle for a 30th career IndyCar victory.

"The team worked really hard because we changed everything in the car last night, so congratulations to them," Castroneves said. "It was not pretty last night, but it proved that we were able to keep pushing."

Team Penske teammate Juan Pablo Montoya of Colombia, who won the season opener in St. Petersburg, Florida will start on the outside of the first row after a qualifying lap of 1:06.6587.

New Zealand's Scott Dixon was fourth-fastest in the Fast Six in his Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet and will share the second row with Andretti Autosport's Ryan Hunter-Reay.

Simon Pagenaud of Team Penske and Josef Newgarden of CFH Racing notched the fifth- and sixth-fastest times.

Kanaan was bitterly disappointed that after his promising start to the day he just missed out on a Fast Six spot -- finishing seventh after the second round of qualification runs.

"We made a change between Q1 and Q2 and that unfortunately cost us a few tenths," Kanaan said. "We were less than one-tenth from sixth, so it was definitely tight."
Source: AFP