Hornish Gives Penske Record Pole

This was Hornish's third pole position of the season, and he beat teammate Castroneves, who had set the pace in practice earlier today, by a mere one thousandth of a second.

"With how quickly he went this morning, we knew that Helio was going to be our main competition for the pole today," Hornish said. "We just went out there and put up the best lap that we could. There was a little bit more push than what we wanted in the car, but it was good enough to do what we needed it to."

Hornish's pole lap was also a record for IRL at the track, and the American added: "This is a great opportunity. We've had some things fall through the cracks at Kansas and Richmond, but we look at those days and those are behind us. We move forward from there.

"It's days like this where we go out, get a good starting position, we have a good view for the start of the race, and just go out there and run our own pace and hopefully not give ourselves any problems. If we go out there and stay out of trouble, we should be OK."

Tomas Scheckter qualified in third position, while points leader Dan Wheldon has qualified in fourth. Buddy Lazier, who stands in for injured Tomas Enge, qualified fifth and will start alongside Danica Patrick in sixth.

Pos  Driver              Make-Engine       Speed
 1.  Sam Hornish Jr.     Dallara-Toyota    170.296
 2.  Helio Castroneves   Dallara-Toyota    170.219
 3.  Tomas Scheckter     Dallara-Chevy     169.000
 4.  Dan Wheldon         Dallara-Honda     168.553
 5.  Buddy Lazier        Dallara-Chevy     168.514
 6.  Danica Patrick      Panoz-Honda       167.328
 7.  Alex Barron         Dallara-Toyota    166.844
 8.  Dario Franchitti    Dallara-Honda     166.620
 9.  Tony Kanaan         Dallara-Honda     165.578
10.  Roger Yasukawa      Dallara-Honda     165.334
11.  Vitor Meira         Panoz-Honda       164.895
12.  Bryan Herta         Dallara-Honda     164.624
13.  Scott Sharp         Panoz-Honda       164.617
14.  Patrick Carpentier  Dallara-Toyota    164.376
15.  Buddy Rice          Panoz-Honda       163.903
16.  Ed Carpenter        Dallara-Toyota    163.886
17.  Jimmy Kite          Dallara-Toyota    163.041
18.  Scott Dixon         Panoz-Toyota      162.386
19.  A.J. Foyt IV        Dallara-Toyota    162.008
20.  Kosuke Matsuura     Panoz-Honda       160.832
21.  Darren Manning      Panoz-Toyota      -
22.  Ryan Briscoe        Panoz-Toyota      -