Castroneves leads Penske front row

A Penske transporter caught fire on Wednesday on the way to the circuit, destroying Castroneves' primary road-course car, along with teammate Ryan Briscoe's.

Briscoe will start alongside Castroneves as both Penske drivers put their back-up cars on the front row.

It will be the third consecutive 1-2 start for Team Penske in road and street races; the duo also started on the front row at Mid-Ohio and Edmonton in July.

Castroneves said his first concern was for the truck drivers, Greg Shuker and Keith Goslin, who were not injured and later coordinated efforts to salvage parts and equipment from the trailer.

"My first reaction was that somebody got hurt," Castroneves said. "The phone rang and the first thing I heard was, 'The truck caught fire.' I thought, 'Oh, my God.' After they said nobody got hurt, then I said, 'What can we do to save the cars? What can we replace? What can we not replace?' Apparently we didn't have any problems. We just tried to stay positive."

Shuker and Goslin returned to Penske headquarters in Mooresville, N.C., and drove another semi-trailer carrying backup cars and parts across country in time for the weekend's event. The team already had cars on-site because of an earlier test by Briscoe, but one car was missing an engine and the neither were prepared.

"Those guys drove without stopping for 2,200 miles," Castroneves said. "They really worked a lot this week. All of these guys worked hard for this and it showed with the front row. They did an incredible job, you can't tell these cars were backups. It was a great result."

Instead of losing ground in his battle for the championship with Scott Dixon, Castroneves gave himself a chance to close the gap. With three races remaining, he is 78 points behind Dixon - a difficult but not impossible margin to overcome.

"We're in a situation where we've got to go; we've got to try," Castroneves said. "We've got to make this gap smaller and that's what we plan to do."

Briscoe, noting the lack of equipment and the fact that the team lost a large amount of the hardware seen in the pits each weekend, noted the effort of the team.

"They've had a lot of work this weekend," he said. "It was great to reward them with a front row."

Saturday's qualifying session also was impressive for KV Racing, who put both drivers in the fast six final qualifying session. Will Power will start third with Oriol Servia sixth.

"As a team, we're just trying to mingle with the big guys," Servia said. "We're showing we have the speed and we're catching up. Every race we're getting closer. To lead the transitional teams, we just want to take another step forward."

Tony Kanaan qualified fourth, earning just his sixth top-five start in 15 races this season.

"We were one change behind," Kanaan said. "We tried everything, but as a team we've come a long way. We've been struggling on the road courses, so I'm glad to be in the top four. You don't want to start worse than the second row here."

Dixon will start fifth, four positions behind Castroneves.

"We just didn't seem to have enough for what the Penske cars had," he said.

"We always seem to race a little better than we qualify. In the last session we lowered the car to try to pick up some time, but I magically went a little slower."

Pos Driver             Team                 Time         Speed
 1. Helio Castroneves  Penske               1:16.9027  107.809 
 2. Ryan Briscoe       Penske               1:16.9185  107.787 
 3. Will Power         KV Racing            1:17.0875  107.551 
 4. Tony Kanaan        Andretti Green       1:17.1286  107.493 
 5. Scott Dixon        Chip Ganassi         1:17.6682  106.746 
 6. Oriol Servia       KV Racing            1:17.8377  106.514 
 7. Justin Wilson      Newman/Haas/Lanigan  1:17.0056  107.665 
 8. Ryan Hunter-Reay   Rahal Letterman      1:17.0378  107.620 
 9. Danica Patrick     Andretti Green       1:17.0458  107.609 
10. Marco Andretti     Andretti Green       1:17.2705  107.296 
11. Mario Dominguez    Pacific Coast        1:17.4614  107.031 
12. Mario Moraes       Dale Coyne           1:17.5882  106.856 
13. Bruno Junqueira    Dale Coyne           1:17.8306  106.524 
14. EJ Viso            HVM Racing           1:17.4189  107.090 
15. Graham Rahal       Newman/Haas/Lanigan  1:17.9012  106.427 
16. Dan Wheldon        Chip Ganassi         1:17.4738  107.014 
17. Tomas Scheckter    Luczo Dragon         1:18.1238  106.124 
18. Vitor Meira        Panther              1:17.5399  106.923 
19. Townsend Bell      Dreyer & Reinbold    1:18.3267  105.849 
20. Hideki Mutoh       Andretti Green       1:18.0038  106.287 
21. Darren Manning     AJ Foyt              1:18.3885  105.766 
22. Buddy Rice         Dreyer & Reinbold    1:18.1139  106.137 
23. Ed Carpenter       Vision Racing        1:18.4034  105.745 
24. AJ Foyt IV         Vision Racing        1:18.3715  105.788 
25. Marty Roth         Roth Racing          1:19.9435  103.708 
26. Jaime Camara       Conquest Racing      1:19.4711  104.325 
27. Enrique Bernoldi   Conquest Racing      no time    no speed