Indianapolis road course IndyCar: Penske's Will Power flies to pole

Power lowered the previous track record in each of the three qualifying phases, eventually finishing with a 1m09.4886s lap that was 0.2 seconds faster than the benchmark set last year by Simon Pagenaud.

Ganassi's Scott Dixon came closest to matching the reigning champion, but ultimately fell 0.2s short.

"When Will was the only one with new tyres left for Q3, the writing was pretty much on the wall," said the New Zealander.

Dixon was happy to be in the Fast Six run-off for pole in the first place after a gamble on trying to progress from the second round on a set of used reds backfired, forcing him to throw on a new set and bump his way back into the top six with just a few seconds remaining.

Helio Castroneves, Juan Pablo Montoya, Simon Pagenaud and Tony Kanaan completed a Penske/Ganassi lockout of the first three rows.

Sebastien Bourdais was the unlucky driver bumped out of the Fast Six by Dixon, although the KV driver blamed himself rather than bad luck.

"Scott was always going to be quicker than us anyway," he said. "But I just didn't do a good job. I locked up on what should have been the quickest lap."

As was foretold by the practice results, the grid was dominated by Chevrolet.

Graham Rahal, who had been Honda's quickest driver early in the weekend, failed to progress from the first round, and it was ultimately left to Foyt's Jack Hawksworth to be the Japanese firm's sole representative in the top 12.

The session was completed mostly without incident. An investigation into an apparent block by Justin Wilson on Takuma Sato determined that the Brit had no case to answer, and Wilson explained that the encounter was caused by the difficulties the new bodywork present when trying to see the car behind.

"It's really tough to see behind you with all of the extra bodywork," he said. "The mirrors are kind of pointless."

Elsewhere, Carlos Huertas's Dale Coyne car suffered an engine failure in the pits although his Honda unit is understood to have already achieved its minimum mileage threshold.

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