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Rain hands Castroneves Motegi pole

Qualifying for the third round of the IRL IndyCar Series has been cancelled as the forecast rain halted all on-track action at Motegi today

The grid will therefore be based on current championship positions, with Penske driver Helio Castroneves handed pole position.

"I'm sitting in the right spot in the championship to be in this situation, and I'll take it," Castroneves said. "We feel we have a consistent car. In the last few years we were very fast here, and I feel we can continue.

"Once you have a good car and (qualifications) are rained out, you prevent a lot of competitors from improving. Hopefully we can do what we did in 2006."

After qualifying was rained out at Motegi in 2006, Castroneves started first and led 184 laps en route to a 6.3-second victory over Dan Wheldon. This is Castroneves' third consecutive pole-position at the 1.52-mile track.

Homestead winner Scott Dixon (Ganassi) will join Castroneves on the front row, ahead of Andretti-Green's Tony Kanaan, who was fastest in Thursday practice.

Castroneves' Penske teammate Ryan Briscoe is worst affected by the loss of qualifying, as his crashes at Homestead and St Petersburg mean he will start a lowly 15th at Motegi.

Beck Motorsports' Roger Yasukawa, who is making his first start of the season at his home race, will line up at the back of the grid.

Only the pre-2008 IRL teams are contesting the Motegi round, with the Champ Car converts instead racing at Long Beach this weekend in a separate event that will count for IndyCar points but is billed as the last ever Champ Car World Series race.

This unusual split was the compromise solution to a date clash that arose when the warring series completed their last-minute merger deal in February. The organisers were unwilling to lose either Honda's home meeting at Motegi or the prestigious former Champ Car event at Long Beach, but could not find an alternative date for either race.

The Friday rain in Japan - which also forced the cancellation of final practice - had been widely anticipated. Teams had therefore focused on race set-ups during yesterday's two practice sessions in the expectation that they would not have to worry about four-lap qualifying runs this weekend.

Dixon and Kanaan had been fastest in the sessions that were held before the poor weather intervened.

Provisional starting order:

Pos  Driver             Team
 1.  Helio Castroneves  Penske
 2.  Scott Dixon        Ganassi
 3.  Tony Kanaan        Andretti-Green
 4.  Marco Andretti     Andretti-Green
 5.  Dan Wheldon        Ganassi
 6.  Danica Patrick     Andretti-Green
 7.  Ed Carpenter       Vision
 8.  AJ Foyt IV         Vision
 9.  Hideki Mutoh       Andretti-Green
10.  Ryan Hunter-Reay   Rahal-Letterman
11.  Buddy Rice         Dreyer & Reinbold
12.  Darren Manning     Foyt
13.  Vitor Meira        Panther
14.  Jay Howard         Roth
15.  Ryan Briscoe       Penske
16.  Townsend Bell      Dreyer & Reinbold
17.  Marty Roth         Roth
18.  Roger Yasukawa     Beck

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