Franchitti beats Patrick to pole

Franchitti turned a lap of 1:16.7017 - 107.961 mph - in the No. 27 Andretti Green Racing Honda/Dallara during the single-lap portion of qualifying, then watched as it held up for the pole position through the 10-minute Fast Six session that followed.

Only Patrick, Franchitti's Andretti Green Racing teammate, made a run at Franchitti, notching a lap of 1:17.1486 during the Fast Six session.

"It wasn't a special lap," Franchitti said. "You get some of those qualifying laps sometimes. I remember in Surfers Paradise one year we qualifying like a second ahead of the field.

"It was one of those special laps; everything went right. This one wasn't one of those. It was kind of an average lap, but I knew I could repeat it over and over."

Patrick matched the best qualifying effort of her IndyCar Series career, equaling her front-row start last month at Mid-Ohio in spite of a spin on pit exit during a practice session Saturday morning.

"I don't make many mistakes, but it seems like I've made a few this year," Patrick said. "We're all pushing so hard to get anything out of the car that we can.

"It seems so much tighter than it ever was before. Now there are eight or 10 people who have a shot. Squeezing those last little bit out is where the mistakes come. That's where mine came."

Another AGR driver, Tony Kanaan, made it a 1-2-3 team sweep with his lap of 1:17.1932 in the No. 11 AGR Honda/Dallara, which topped Team Penske's Helio Castroneves, Target Chip Ganassi's Scott Dixon and Penske's Sam Hornish Jr.

"It's going to be tough to get to the front tomorrow, but it's a good effort to have a 1-2-3 start," Kanaan said.

"The car is definitely good enough to win the race tomorrow. We'll try to help out Dario, since he's in a better position, but we're still going to try to win. There's no pressure on me."

Franchitti's front-running start in Sunday's race kicks off a three-race run to the championship between himself, Dixon and Kanaan. Franchitti leads Dixon by just eight points, while Kanaan is 52 points off the pace.

The pole was Franchitti's second of the season and fifth if his IndyCar career. More telling, perhaps, is the fact that it will be his third consecutive front-row start.

"When I go into a qualifying situation, I don't think about what someone else might do," Franchitti said. "I just get the maximum out of what I've got available to me. I came into the pits and said, 'That's it. That's all I've got.'"

Patrick, who had the 12th-best lap among the 18-car field during Friday's practice sessions, said she was surprised at how quickly the car came around - and how pedestrian her best lap appeared to be.

"It wasn't a pretty lap," Patrick said. "I think there's still some time left out on the track, but we're still sitting on the front row, and that's a far cry from where I have been on road courses and even from where I was here yesterday."

Ryan Hunter-Reay, who replaced Jeff Simmons in the No. 17 Rahal Letterman entry last month, just missed the Fast Six session, in which the top six drivers from the single-lap session get on the track simultaneously for a 10-minute run for the pole.

Hunter-Reay, who's competing at Infineon for the first time in his career, will start seventh, followed by Marco Andretti, Buddy Rice and Dan Wheldon.

Pos  Driver             Speed
 1.  Dario Franchitti   107.951
 2.  Danica Patrick     107.325
 3.  Tony Kanaan        107.263
 4.  Helio Castroneves  107.169
 5.  Scott Dixon        107.063
 6.  Sam Hornish Jr     106.721
 7.  Ryan Hunter-Reay   106.309
 8.  Marco Andretti     105.614
 9.  Buddy Rice         105.403
10.  Dan Wheldon        105.260
11.  Tomas Scheckter    105.210
12.  Kosuke Matsuura    105.149
13.  Vitor Meira        104.506
14.  Ed Carpenter       104.364
15.  AJ Foyt IV         103.745
16.  Darren Manning     103.166
17.  Scott Sharp         93.183
18.  Sarah Fisher        -