Long Beach IndyCar: Penske's Castroneves takes pole position

The Brazilian, the only Chevrolet driver to make it into the top six, set a time of 1m06.225s during a session in which the track's lap record tumbled multiple times.

Practice pacesetter Scott Dixon was second fastest, 0.187 seconds adrift, ahead of Ryan Hunter-Reay and James Hinchcliffe, who bounced back from gearbox issues earlier in the day.

Alexander Rossi and Graham Rahal were next up in fifth, and sixth place in the Honda-dominated top end.

Denied a spot in the final six shootout by 0.008s by Hunter-Reay, Charlie Kimball will start seventh.

Josef Newgarden also missed out on a chance to fight for pole. He was eighth, ahead of Penske team-mate Will Power, while Marco Andretti completed the top 10.

Andretti initially failed to advance to the second part of qualifying, setting the seventh-fastest time in his group for the opening segment.

However, reigning champion and defending Long Beach winner Simon Pagenaud had his fastest time deleted for impeding Castroneves, and will start in last place.

Tony Kanaan and St. Petersburg winner Sebastien Bourdais were the other two drivers to progress to the second phase, and wound up 11th and 12th fastest.

Ed Jones, JR Hildebrand, Conor Daly, and Spencer Pigot were all eliminated from group one in the first part of qualifying, while Carlos Munoz, Mikhail Aleshin, Takuma Sato, Max Chilton, and the penalised Pagenaud dropped out from group two.

LONG BEACH STARTING GRID: