Rice scoops Kansas pole

It was the third pole position of the season for Rice and second in three races since he won the Indianapolis 500 in May. He has started on the front row in five of the seven races this season in the IRL IndyCar Series.

"Every time the cars went out, we got faster," Rice said of Saturday's practice sessions. "One of the things we had that helped was that we didn't have other cars [from support series] in the middle of the groove. It made it not nearly as much of a factor to be going out first versus last, like it has at some other places."

Tony Kanaan took a shot at Rice's fastest lap late in the qualifying session, but came up just a tick short and will start on the outside of the front row. Rice's team-mate, Vitor Meira, will start third after posting a lap of 209.342mph.

"I knew I couldn't get Buddy in qualifying, but third is good," said Meira. "We'll have a good race car. We had a similar set-up to Buddy's car, but we did a couple of tweaks in the chassis that were different."

Sam Hornish Jr. was the highest-qualifying Toyota driver at fourth. Tomas Scheckter put his Chevrolet-powered car in the fifth starting position, and Helio Castroneves secured the sixth spot.

Townsend Bell, in his first day in an IRL car, had the seventh-fastest lap in the 21-car field. Kosuke Matsuura, Dario Franchitti and Bryan Herta rounded out the top 10. Dan Wheldon only managed the 13th fastest laptime in qualifying, with Darren Manning down in 19th.