Castroneves heads Penske front row

Castroneves greeted Hoirnish Jr. with a smile and hearty congratulations after qualifying - quite a change from his reaction a year ago at the same track.

Then, Castroneves was miffed by the collision that knocked him out of the race and allowed Hornish to go on and win. This year, though, Castroneves was thrilled to win the pole in record-breaking style.

The result marks the third Penske front-row sweep in 10 races this season, Castroneves' fourth pole, and his team's seventh.

"You made me work too hard, man," Castroneves told Hornish in the pits after recording a lap of 21.1854 seconds - 172.477 mph - to take the pole from his teammate. Hornish laughed and replied, "I didn't want you to take it easy."

Hornish had assumed the provisional pole position from Marco Andretti with a lap of 21.1974 (172.380 mph). Castroneves, who went out two cars after Hornish, knocked him off by going 0.0120 seconds faster.

"It was really hard to stay flat-out," Castroneves said. "Obviously, I knew what Sam's time was, and I knew that he was probably the only guy who could match our time. It was hard. I had to do some things in the car to make it happen. It was really close."

Last year's crash between the teammates led to some tension, but it didn't last long. "We're both going to have good weekends and bad weekends," Hornish said. "We've both learned from that incident."

The crash, which occurred with the two drivers racing side-by-side for fourth place with 38 laps remaining in the race, led both drivers to question whether the other was at fault. After the crash, Castroneves joked half-seriously: "I'll be OK with it as long as I get half of the prize money."

Behind the scenes, however, the incident led to an improvement in communication that strengthened their relationship. "From that point to now, both Sam and I understood that we were teammates," Castroneves said. "We race each other very hard, but we give each other room. The incident last year helped us to grow up quite a bit. It made us better teammates."

Following the two Penske drivers on the grid are Andretti-Green Racing teammates Andretti, who recorded a lap of 21.2732 seconds, and Tony Kanaan.

"I don't know if you can ever have too much grip, but I think that's what we had today," Kanaan said. "That's good for the race, but it took away some of our speed for qualifying. I went flat all the way around and we still weren't fast enough."

Vitor Meira will start fifth in the Panther Racing entry, while Jeff Simmons, who hadn't started better than 13th this season for Rahal Letterman Racing qualified sixth.

"We were hoping to be in the top half of the field; that's a place we hadn't been this season," said Simmons, who has been struggling with teammates Buddy Rice and Danica Patrick to adjust to the team's switch from Panoz to Dallara chassis. "It's nice to continue the progress with the chassis."

Noticeably off the pace were both Target Chip Ganassi Racing drivers - Scott Dixon and Dan Wheldon - and the other AGR drivers Bryan Herta and Dario Franchitti. Franchitti had the fastest lap of Friday's practice sessions, but will start 12th after a lap of 169.719 mph - faster than his best Friday speed - didn't hold up to Saturday's onslaught of qualifying speed. In all, six drivers broke the IRL track record of 21.4567 seconds set last year by Hornish.

Dixon, who pulled to within five points of Hornish in the IRL standings after winning last weekend at Nashville, will start 10th when Sunday's race begins at 1:45 p.m. EDT. Wheldon, who also surged back into the championship race last weekend with a runner-up finish, will start 11th.

"I think we might have been too conservative in our qualifying set-up," Dixon said. "There's been a lot of frustration this year on short ovals for us. We're new to the Honda/Dallara package on these tracks, and the lack of testing has put us at a disadvantage.

"I've had a bit of a love-hate relationship with Milwaukee. I had some success here with Indy Lights, but the last two years here have been just awful."

Qualifying times:

Pos  Driver            Team               Time
 1.  Helio Castroneves Penske             21.1854
 2.  Sam Hornish Jr    Penske             21.1974
 3.  Marco Andretti    Andretti-Green     21.2732
 4.  Tony Kanaan       Andretti-Green     21.2841
 5.  Vitor Meira       Panther            21.3929
 6.  Jeff Simmons      Rahal-Letterman    21.4195
 7.  Ed Carpenter      Vision             21.4632
 8.  Tomas Scheckter   Vision             21.4901
 9.  Bryan Herta       Andretti-Green     21.4954
10.  Scott Dixon       Ganassi            21.4962
11.  Dan Wheldon       Ganassi            21.5003
12.  Dario Franchitti  Andretti-Green     21.5297
13.  Buddy Rice        Rahal-Letterman    21.5694
14.  Danica Patrick    Rahal-Letterman    21.5863
15.  Kosuke Matsuura   Aguri Fernandez    21.6220
16.  Jeff Bucknum      Foyt               21.6723
17.  Scott Sharp       Fernandez          21.8033
18.  Ryan Briscoe      Dreyer & Reinbold  22.1153