Power takes St Petersburg pole

The 2010 series runner-up had been quickest in two out of three practice sessions, and after his Penske team-mate Ryan Briscoe and Ganassi's Scott Dixon briefly held provisional pole in the 'fast six' final session, Power produced the fastest lap of the weekend to take pole with a 1m01.962s.

Two Ganassi cars will chase Power off the start, with champion Dario Franchitti shrugging off a morning practice crash to get closest to the Australian with a lap 0.3328 seconds away from pole and 0.1s ahead of team-mate Dixon.

Mike Conway could not quite repeat his top three form from practice, but fourth on his debut with Andretti Autosport and his first event back since his ferocious Indianapolis 500 crash was still a tremendous result.

Briscoe and Dreyer & Reinbold's Justin Wilson were the other drivers to make it through to the final session and will line up on row three.

Marco Andretti (Andretti Autosport) narrowly missed out on a spot in the pole shoot-out and will share row four with Tony Kanaan, whose contribution to the Andretti team he criticised in a Racer blog earlier this week. Kanaan was delighted to start his KV deal with eighth place, three positions ahead of team-mate Takuma Sato. KV's third driver EJ Viso only qualified 21st but at least completed a session without incident for the first time this weekend.

Sam Schmidt Motorsports' return to IndyCar got off to a great start as Alex Tagliani qualified 10th, just behind Penske's Helio Castroneves.

Vitor Meira came close to pulling off a surprise top-12 position for AJ Foyt's team, on a weekend when its legendary boss is absent while recovering from having a stent inserted to clear a blocked artery earlier this week. Meira was edged outside the group one cut-off by a late improvement from Andretti, so starts 13th.

Friday morning pacesetter Ryan Hunter-Reay (Andretti) surprisingly failed to get beyond the group stages and lines up 14th, ahead of Newman/Haas' Oriol Servia - another man whose practice form suggested he was on course for the top 12, only to fail to get a clean lap in during early qualifying.

The group two session ended with a massive accident for Conquest's Sebastian Saavedra after the Colombian misunderstood a marshal's instruction and exited the pits into the path of Sebastien Bourdais' Dale Coyne car. Contact between the two sent Saavedra heavily into the wall, ruling out Conquest's primary chassis for the weekend. Both drivers were unhurt.

Pos  Driver               Team               Time        Gap
 1.  Will Power           Penske             1m01.9625s
 2.  Dario Franchitti     Ganassi            1m02.2953s  + 0.3328s
 3.  Scott Dixon          Ganassi            1m02.3975s  + 0.4350s
 4.  Mike Conway          Andretti           1m02.5306s  + 0.5681s
 5.  Ryan Briscoe         Penske             1m02.5744s  + 0.6119s
 6.  Justin Wilson        Dreyer & Reinbold  1m02.7729s  + 0.8104s
 7.  Marco Andretti       Andretti           1m02.6312s  (Round 2)
 8.  Tony Kanaan          KV                 1m02.7818s  (Round 2)
 9.  Helio Castroneves    Penske             1m02.8204s  (Round 2)
10.  Alex Tagliani        Schmidt            1m02.8225s  (Round 2)
11.  Takuma Sato          KV                 1m02.9312s  (Round 2)
12.  Graham Rahal         Ganassi            1m03.0640s  (Round 2)
13.  Vitor Meira          Foyt               1m03.1315s  (Group 1)
14.  Ryan Hunter-Reay     Andretti           1m03.1778s  (Group 2)
15.  Oriol Servia         Newman/Haas        1m03.2434s  (Group 1)
16.  Raphael Matos        AFS                1m03.2594s  (Group 2)
17.  Simona de Silvestro  HVM                1m03.2724s  (Group 1)
18.  Sebastien Bourdais   Coyne              1m03.3188s  (Group 2)
19.  Danica Patrick       Andretti           1m03.3764s  (Group 1)
20.  Ana Beatriz          Dreyer & Reinbold  1m03.8036s  (Group 2)
21.  EJ Viso              KV                 1m03.4065s  (Group 1)
22.  James Jakes          Coyne              1m03.8854s  (Group 2)
23.  Charlie Kimball      Ganassi            1m03.5162s  (Group 1)
24.  Sebastian Saavedra   Conquest           1m03.9696s  (Group 2)
25.  JR Hildebrand        Panther            1m03.8256s  (Group 1)