Will Power had to wait until the last car to go out whether or not he’d win the pole for Sunday’s Pocono IndyCar 500.
The last car to take time in qualifying was his Penske Racing teammate Juan Pablo Montoya in his No. 2 Chevrolet.
Montoya put his money where his mouth is by besting Power’s provisional pole speed to have a two-lap average of 223.871 mph.
“The big thing for us was balance,” Montoya said. “In a way of running late when you have three teammates you can see how much they struggle and you can adjust the car and get a little more information.”
It was also his first IndyCar pole since Surfer’s Paradise in Australia in 2000 and has a pole at the Tricky Triangle on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series circuit in August 2012.
“I had no idea what to expect,” Montoya said about his pole run. “This morning, we felt we had a good car in race trim and really struggled to trim the car down and every time we trimmed it, it was awful. I had a lot of under steer, so we made quite a bit of changes for qualifying and it was really, really good.”
Montoya is coming off a third-place finish at Texas Motor Speedway last month and a runner-up finish in Race 1 at the Shell/Pennzoil Grand Prix of Houston last Saturday.
“I feel a lot more comfortable in the car,” he added. “I feel at home in the car but I need to be a little more productive with the car and help the engineers a little more to tell them what the car’s doing.”
There were two nice surprises in the top five.
Rookie Carlos Munoz backed up his practice speeds to qualify third at 223.083 mph and was the third driver in qualifying to crack the 223 mph range. A.J. Foyt Racing driver Takuma Sato also squeaked into the top five by slotting in fourth.
Last year’s Pocono pole-sitter Marco Andretti rounded out the top five.
James Hinchcliffe, Helio Castroneves, Tony Kanaan, who was fastest in first practice, Ryan-Hunter Reay and Ryan Briscoe.
The top 11 drivers in qualifying beat the old track record set by Marco Andretti, which was a two-lap average of 221.273 mph.
There was only one incident during qualifying when Josef Newgarden lost control of his No. 67 car and attained damage without putting up a lap.
Jack Hawksworth had a scary crash in practice by hitting driver’s side first and banging up his knee. His team didn’t attempt a qualifying run and Hawksworth has been ruled out for running Sunday’s race.
2014 Pocono IndyCar 500 lineup
1. #2 Juan Pablo Montoya (223.871 mph)
2. #12 Will Power (223.725 mph)
3. #34 Carlos Munoz (R) (223.083 mph)
4. #14 Takuma Sato (222.798 mph)
5. #25 Marco Andretti (222.715 mph)
6. #27 James Hinchcliffe (222.544 mph)
7. #3 Helio Castroneves (222.517 mph)
8. #10 Tony Kanaan (221. 97 mph)
9. #28 Ryan Hunter-Reay (221.95 mph)
10. #8 Ryan Briscoe (221.565 mph)
11. #77 Simon Pagenaud (221.547 mph)
12. #7 Mikhali Aleshin (R) (221.221 mph)
13. #20 Ed Carpenter (221.019 mph)
14. #15 Graham Rahal (220.747 mph)
15. #9 Scott Dixon (220.604 mph)
16. #19 Justin Wilson (220.439 mph)
17. #83 Charlie Kimball (220.377 mph)
18. #11 Sebastien Bourdais (219. 741 mph)
19. #17 Sebastian Saavedra (218.502 mph)
20. #18 Carlos Huertas (R) (216.261 mph)
21. #67 Josef Newgarden (no speed)
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