Herta Claims Pole in St Petersburg

Herta's pole is his second in succession, following on from the pole earned at the Phoenix International Speedway two weeks ago, but was earned under the new qualifying regulations brought in by series organisers for road courses.

Helio Castroneves, as the fastest runner in qualifying on Friday, was given the option to be either the first or last driver to run in qualifying. He chose to be last on track.

The qualifying procedure in place had every driver running one by one through the grid, with the top six runners given ten minutes to run unlimited laps together to establish the positions on the first three rows of the grid.

After the first section of qualifying, the top six was as follows:

1. Dario Franchitti    1:03.0384 
2. Helio Castroneves   1:03.1975 
3. Tomas Enge          1:03.2650 
4. Bryan Herta         1:03.4260 
5. Sam Hornish Jr.     1:03.4515 
6. Tony Kanaan         1:03.7254 

Herta was the biggest winner of the new format: "It's easy for me to say it's a good thing because it worked out for me, but I really do think it was cool - I was on the fence about it, but it's exciting!

The single-car thing isn't as exciting, but the six-car shootout was really exciting. It put a lot of pressure on the six of us trying to improve."

Tony Kanaan also made the most of the new format, moving up from sixth to third on the grid. "It was awesome!" he noted after the session. "I think it was very exciting, and I hope the fans liked it. I enjoyed it. We had to the opportunity to get better, and we did, so I enjoyed it even more."

Pos Driver              Time       Speed (mph)