Briscoe leads Penske front row

His team-mate Helio Castroneves will start second in Saturday night's race, ahead of Briscoe's main title rival Dario Franchitti (Ganassi).

The session was delayed by both morning rain and incidents in the preceding stock car practice, and was interrupted again halfway through by brief drizzle.

Briscoe was one of the final drivers to qualify, and was able to beat Castroneves' time and take pole with an average speed of 215.364mph over four laps.

"The car was great, and at this point we'll take any point that we can get," said the Australian. "I think it helps being at the back of the line, and getting a bit of a read from Helio. He put in four great laps and I was happy to do a little bit better."

Castroneves said he was just relieved to have a straightforward qualifying session at a track where a year ago he had been demoted from the front row to the back for illegally crossing the white line on the backstraight during his run.

"I made sure that I did not touch the white line," Castroneves joked. "I made sure I could go as close as I could without doing anything wrong."

Franchitti had held provisional pole for much of the session before the Penske duo moved ahead. He will share row two with Andretti Green's top qualifier Tony Kanaan.

Scott Dixon only managed sixth in the second Ganassi car, despite having been fastest in morning practice - when he admitted he was aided by a tow "from about eight cars."

Newman/Haas/Lanigan had a strong qualifying session, with Graham Rahal taking fifth on the grid and Oriol Servia lining up ninth, his best result since returning to the series. By contrast Robert Doornbos, whose move to HVM allowed Servia to rejoin N/H/L, was only 22nd as his team struggled in oval trim.

Pos  Driver             Team                 Speed
 1.  Ryan Briscoe       Penske               215.364mph
 2.  Helio Castroneves  Penske               215.202mph
 3.  Dario Franchitti   Ganassi              214.973mph
 4.  Tony Kanaan        Andretti Green       214.661mph
 5.  Graham Rahal       Newman/Haas/Lanigan  214.556mph
 6.  Scott Dixon        Ganassi              214.494mph
 7.  Marco Andretti     Andretti Green       214.428mph
 8.  Mario Moraes       KV                   214.331mph
 9.  Oriol Servia       Newman/Haas/Lanigan  214.126mph
10.  Danica Patrick     Andretti Green       214.104mph
11.  Dan Wheldon        Panther              213.808mph
12.  Ed Carpenter       Vision               213.331mph
13.  Hideki Mutoh       Andretti Green       213.256mph
14.  Tomas Scheckter    Dreyer & Reinbold    213.218mph
15.  Justin Wilson      Coyne                213.011mph
16.  Mike Conway        Dreyer & Reinbold    212.671mph
17.  Raphael Matos      Luczo Dragon         212.387mph
18.  Ryan Hunter-Reay   Foyt                 212.337mph
19.  Sarah Fisher       Fisher               212.125mph
20.  EJ Viso            HVM                  211.586mph
21.  Milka Duno         Dreyer & Reinbold    211.465mph
22.  Robert Doornbos    HVM                  211.169mph
23.  Jaques Lazier      3G                   208.333mph