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Long Beach Indy Lights: Veach secures pole in thrilling session

Zach Veach triumphed in a thrilling qualifying battle to secure pole position for Sunday's Long Beach Indy Lights race.

For much of the session the front row had been controlled by Belardi team-mates Gabby Chaves and Alex Baron, with the latter having established himself at the top 16 minutes before the end of the session.

With just a couple of minutes remaining the Frenchman returned to the pits to see whether his time would hold, and as the countdown entered the final 30 seconds, he was sought for an interview by the circuit commentary team about what appeared to be his first Lights pole.

Yet the interviewer had not even completed his first question before Veach, Chaves and Matthew Brabham all managed to beat Baron's time with their final runs.

The degree of competition was evident in the fact that the top four were covered by a scant 0.0789 seconds, and Veach admitted that he was fortunate to have secured the top spot.

"On my second-last lap my engineer said: 'You're currently fourth and I'm not here for that, so figure out what you're doing'," said the St Petersburg race winner.

"I'm not sure what I did or how I did it, but it was a magical lap."

Luiz Razia led the pursuit of the top four, albeit 0.7439s in arrears, with Jack Harvey finishing up just short of the Brazilian's time.

Pos  Driver             Team       Time        Gap
 1.  Zach Veach         Andretti   1m15.0074s   
 2.  Gabby Chaves       Belardi    1m15.0349s  +0.0275s
 3.  Matthew Brabham    Andretti   1m15.0692s  +0.0618s
 4.  Alex Baron         Belardi    1m15.0863s  +0.0789s
 5.  Luiz Razia         Schmidt    1m15.7513s  +0.7439s
 6.  Jack Harvey        Schmidt    1m15.9463s  +0.9389s
 7.  Scott Anderson     Fan Force  1m15.9819s  +0.9745s
 8.  Juan Piedrahita    Schmidt    1m16.2681s  +1.2607s
 9.  Juan Pablo Garcia  Schmidt    1m16.3914s  +1.3840s
10.  Vittorio Ghirelli  Moore      1m16.4741s  +1.4667s
11.  Zack Meyer         Moore      1m16.4882s  +1.4808s
12.  Lloyd Read         Herta      1m17.2629s  +2.2555s

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