Wheldon takes Kansas pole

Ganassi's Dan Wheldon won the pole position on Saturday for the Kansas Lottery Indy 300 at Kansas Speedway, interrupting a recent run of dominance by Penske, which wasn't far behind as the 19-car field qualified for Sunday's race. Wheldon's lap of 25.6257 seconds - 213.536 mph - was less than 0.02 seconds faster than Hornish's lap of 213.372 mph around the 1.5-mile oval.

Wheldon's teammate Scott Dixon had the third-best lap (212.533 mph), followed by Penske's Helio Castroneves.

The two teams have combined to lead 1,123 of the first 1,205 laps this season and have won all seven races so far. Penske, though, had started to assert itself in recent weeks, winning the last two races - Castroneves at Texas, Hornish at Richmond - and pulling away in a one-two in the IRL IndyCar Series standings.

"We can't afford to let Team Penske keep taking points from us," Wheldon said. "To tell you the truth, I need to start taking some big points away from them. As you've seen in the last couple of races, there hasn't quite been the overtaking we've seen in the past, so qualifying does become more important."

Hornish, who struggled to find speed in the Saturday morning practice sessions, said the crew of the No. 6 Penske Dallara-Honda missed its set-up just a bit, but still found enough to put him on the front row.

"We missed the gears a little bit, but we still ran quicker than we thought we were going to," Hornish said. "We were a little too short on the gears, but we ran a little quicker than I thought we would. Obviously it wasn't fast enough, but it still wasn't bad."

Following Castroneves was Kosuke Matsuura in the No. 55 Super Aguri Fernandez Racing Honda/Dallara, Vitor Meira in the Panther Racing Honda/Dallara, and the impressive Buddy Lazier in the Dreyer & Reinbold Honda/Dallara. Tomas Scheckter, Buddy Rice and Scott Sharp rounded out the top 10.

Dixon, who won at Watkins Glen in June and is current third in the standings, 23 points behind Castroneves, said a 15 mph wind and 95-degree heat made for tricky qualifying conditions.

"It's pushing you real hard going into (turn) three," Dixon said. "You run up the track a lot. It's hard to keep the car down. You run qualifying with a little less front wing to help eliminate drag, and the wind just pushes the front end out. It's going to make the race pretty interesting."

Wheldon noted that most teams will make drastic changes on the cars before Sunday's race in an attempt to offset the heat and wind.

"The difference between the qualifying car and the race car here is going to be more different than it's ever been," Wheldon said. "You're going to have enough downforce to make the tires last, and the wind conditions make things tricky. At the same time, the pace is going to have to be quick. It's going to be intense.

"We've just got to make sure we make all the right decisions and not do anything different than what we've been doing.

"We've just got to do everything the same, and hopefully we'll come out on top."

Surprisingly off pace were the four Andretti Green Racing cars, which will start on the sixth, seventh and eighth rows when Sunday's race begins shortly after 1 p.m. EDT.

Qualifying times:

Pos  Driver             Team                  Time    Speed
 1.  Dan Wheldon        Ganassi            25.6257  213.536
 2.  Sam Hornish Jr.    Penske             25.6453  213.372
 3.  Scott Dixon        Ganassi            25.7466  212.533
 4.  Helio Castroneves  Penske             25.7540  212.472
 5.  Kosuke Matsuura    Fernandez          25.7622  212.404
 6.  Vitor Meira        Panther            25.7936  212.146
 7.  Buddy Lazier       Dreyer & Reinbold  25.9692  210.711
 8.  Tomas Scheckter    Vision             26.0065  210.409
 9.  Buddy Rice         Rahal-Letterman    26.0092  210.387
10.  Scott Sharp        Fernandez          26.0096  210.384
11.  Marco Andretti     Andretti-Green     26.0716  209.884
12.  Danica Patrick     Rahal-Letterman    26.1199  209.495
13.  Tony Kanaan        Andretti-Green     26.1358  209.368
14.  Dario Franchitti   Andretti-Green     26.1398  209.336
15.  Bryan Herta        Andretti-Green     26.1789  209.023
16.  Ed Carpenter       Vision             26.2284  208.629
17.  Jeff Simmons       Rahal-Letterman    26.2300  208.616
18.  Felipe Giaffone    Foyt               26.3825  207.410
19.  Eddie Cheever Jr.  Cheever            26.4321  207.021