Hornish gives team record Indy pole

Hornish posted a four-lap average of 228.985mph early in the qualifying session, then watched and waited before Target Chip Ganassi Racing conceded the pole position when they bagged last-minute attempts to top Hornish's effort.

For Hornish, the day of drama, both real and perceived, ended a rain-delayed two-week run in which his No. 6 Marlboro Team Penske Honda/Dallara clearly was the fastest car on the track.

Hornish led seven of the eight practice sessions, nearly hit 230 mph while practicing Saturday morning - the fastest lap of the month - and had more than a tenth of a second a lap on his closest challenger, teammate Helio Castroneves.

"I don't know if anything can compare to this, other than winning the race," Hornish said. "People ask me what it would be like to win this race, but I don't know how to answer that. Hopefully I'll be able to some day."

The 1-2 start by Penske drivers for the May 28 race will be the 32nd and 33rd front-row starts by Roger Penske's team, which has won a record 13 Indy 500 races. Considering the dominance of Hornish and Castroneves so far this month, a 14th is possible.

"Sam was too strong for everybody else out here," Castroneves said. "He was very conservative, but it's still good for us. We're at the limit, and right now the limit looks very good."

Hornish needed little time - in fact, he didn't even need an official lap - to show superiority Saturday. His warmup lap - 227.233 mph - was better than the four-lap average that occupied the No. 1 spot at the time, a 226.921 mph effort by Scott Dixon in the No. 9 Target Chip Ganassi Racing Honda/Dallara.

Hornish's second lap - 229.215 mph - was his best, and the four-lap total of 2:37.2155 held up against Wheldon's effort, which came just nine minutes later, and Castroneves' run, which came less than 30 minutes after Hornish's.

"I told the guys we were going to run a 229 average," Hornish said. "Unfortunately, we weren't able to do that, but I felt really comfortable out there. I had a little push the last couple of laps, which knocked some of our speed off, but our time held up."

With Wheldon third and Dixon fourth on the grid and two more opportunities to withdraw and try again, Chip Ganassi and his drivers considered making last-minute shots at Hornish.

With both drivers in their cars as the clock neared the 6:00pm deadline, Ganassi eventually conceded.

"They deserve to be where they are," Wheldon said. "They've been very, very powerful this month."

Then Castroneves went out and shoved Wheldon aside, but didn't have enough speed in his No. 3T Penske Honda/Dallara to catch Hornish. "Hopefully we can finish like that," Castroneves said.

Then they wondered. Would Ganassi cars go back out later in the day and try to top the Penske speeds? Or would Wheldon settle for third and Dixon settle for fourth? "If some voodoo happens with Wheldon and Dixon, I'm ready," Castroneves joked at mid-afternoon.

It never happened. With both Ganassi drivers strapped in and waiting on pit road, Arie Luyendyk Jr. completed his qualifying attempt to give the grid 32 qualifiers. After a short wait, the Ganassi cars were officially retired.

"We tried a qualifying sim late in the day, and we came up a little bit loose," Wheldon said. "If that wouldn't have happened, I think we would have tried it.

"We needed to get a lot better in order to compete. With the advantage that Sam seems to have in qualifying trim, we needed to be a lot better than we were."

Expecting a happy-hour attempt by Ganassi, Penske remained on standby during the late stages of the session. Under the new qualifying format, teams are able to withdraw an entry and attempt to qualify it again two more times after the original attempt.

"It was interesting that Ganassi didn't go out," Penske said. "We thought they would, but I think they ran out of time. You don't want to throw away a third and fourth starting position for the Indianapolis 500. That team had the capability to knock us off."

Instead, Hornish will start from the pole, with Castroneves next to him and Wheldon, last year's race winner, on the outside of the front row. Dixon will start inside the second row, with Tony Kanaan in the middle and Vitor Meira on the outside.

Kanaan tempered an otherwise frustrating day for five-car Andretti Green Racing. Rookie Marco Andretti was the only other team member to qualify among the top 10.

Michael Andretti, returning to the 500 for the first time since 2003, will start 13th, while teammates Bryan Herta and Dario Franchitti will start 16th and 17th, respectively.

"The team had fights and discussions about which way we should take," Kanaan said. "We were struggling together, so hopefully we'll take the joy together."

Meira, who finished second in the 500 last year but lost his ride at the end of the season, was unemployed through much of the offseason until Panther Racing, which nearly went out of business last winter, hired him to run the 2006 season.

The team hadn't found much speed at Indianapolis Motor Speedway during the past two weeks until practice sessions Thursday and Friday.

"We found a lot of it the day before yesterday," Meira said. "It's been amazing -- the recovery and the improvement. To believe in the car, you have to believe in the crew. I think we've got this nailed down."

The two Fernandez Racing entries, driven by Scott Sharp and Kosuke Matsuura, also were solid Saturday, landing the seventh and eighth starting positions with averages in the 225s. "Hopefully we set ourselves up to shine on the 28th," Sharp said.

Following rookie Marco Andretti on the grid - "these were the longest four laps of my career," the 19-year-old said - was Danica Patrick, who landed the inside of the fourth row with a four-lap average just a shade better than Tomas Scheckter.

Perhaps the most surprising qualifier in the first four rows, however, was Scheckter's Vision Racing teammate, Ed Carpenter, whose previous best start in an IRL IndyCar Series race was seventh at Texas in 2004.

"We did a lot of work in the offseason, and it's starting to pay off now, especially for me," Carpenter said. "We're starting to really come together as a team."

In the end, though, Hornish was the toast of the day, the week, and the month, but he has other ideas. He wants to be the toast of the race.

"I want to be first," Hornish said. "Starting from the pole is a great way to start this race. The pole is the second-best thing to winning the race.

"This is the best opportunity I've had here."

Line up for the 90th Indianapolis 500:

Pos  Driver             Make           Speed (mph)
 1.  Sam Hornish Jr.    Dallara-Honda  228.985
 2.  Helio Castroneves  Dallara-Honda  228.008
 3.  Dan Wheldon        Dallara-Honda  227.338
 4.  Scott Dixon        Dallara-Honda  226.921
 5.  Tony Kanaan        Dallara-Honda  226.776
 6.  Vitor Meira        Dallara-Honda  226.156
 7.  Kosuke Matsuura    Dallara-Honda  225.503
 8.  Scott Sharp        Dallara-Honda  225.321
 9.  Marco Andretti     Dallara-Honda  224.918
10.  Danica Patrick     Panoz-Honda    224.674
11.  Tomas Scheckter    Dallara-Honda  224.659
12.  Ed Carpenter       Dallara-Honda  224.548
13.  Michael Andretti   Dallara-Honda  224.508
14.  Buddy Rice         Panoz-Honda    224.393
15.  Townsend Bell      Dallara-Honda  224.374
16.  Bryan Herta        Dallara-Honda  224.179
17.  Dario Franchitti   Dallara-Honda  223.345
18.  Max Papis          Dallara-Honda  222.058
19.  Eddie Cheever Jr.  Dallara-Honda  222.028
20.  P.J. Chesson       Dallara-Honda  221.576
21.  Felipe Giaffone    Dallara-Honda  221.542
22.  Jeff Bucknum       Dallara-Honda  221.461
23.  Larry Foyt         Dallara-Honda  221.332
24.  Jaques Lazier      Panoz-Honda    221.151
25.  Buddy Lazier       Dallara-Honda  220.922
26.  Jeff Simmons       Panoz-Honda    220.347
27.  Al Unser Jr.       Dallara-Honda  219.388
28.  Roger Yasukawa     Panoz-Honda    218.793
29.  Airton Dare        Panoz-Honda    218.170
30.  Stephan Gregoire   Panoz-Honda    217.428
31.  Arie Luyendyk Jr.  Panoz-Honda    216.352
32.  P.J. Jones         Panoz-Honda    215.816