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Texas IndyCar: Will Power on pole after challenging session

Will Power will start Saturday night's IndyCar race at Texas Motor Speedway from pole position after triumphing in a difficult qualifying session on Friday

Limited practice time and substantially warmer conditions than earlier in the day left many drivers battling understeer toward the end of their runs.

Power was one of the few who managed to be both fast and consistent across both of his laps, and a 218.896mph average was the Penske driver's reward.

"I could see that people were dropping off a lot on the second lap," he said.

"It was a bit loose for me on the first lap and I wasn't sure what I was going to do on the second, but I managed to keep it almost flat. I was actually a bit surprised by the speed when I saw it on my dash."

Also surprised by his own performance was Josef Newgarden, whose 217.835mph average was good enough to put him on the front row despite him claiming that his team had done virtually zero work on qualifying preparation.

"Our theory is if we made the race car as good as possible, it should be OK for qualifying," said the Sarah Fisher Hartman driver.

"I didn't know how much speed we'd have - I was hoping for top 10. I almost thought we didn't do enough; it almost felt too easy. We've just got a bit of mojo on our side."

Tony Kanaan briefly held provisional pole before being bumped by Newgarden, although he still finished up third-fastest alongside Juan Pablo Montoya, who was one of many to go quick on the first lap and then struggle on their second.

Ed Carpenter was disappointed with his time after being happy with his car in opening practice - mid-way through the session he told AUTOSPORT that he expected to end up 10th. As it was, he will start from fifth alongside Scott Dixon, who was also mystified at where his speed from earlier in the day had disappeared to.

Power's mid-session prediction for pole was team-mate Helio Castroneves, and no one was more surprised by the Brazilian when he finished up 14th.

"I couldn't even go flat," he said. "It was so bad. And it's very weird, because in practice it was so good.

"It's strange, because the three of us [Penske drivers] have a very similar set-up, and I don't understand why I had so much more understeer."

Ryan Briscoe was another who faded relative to his performance earlier in the day; the Ganassi driver explaining later that a gearing problem had contributed to his qualifying 12th.

Pos  Driver              Team/Engine     Speed
 1.  Will Power          Penske/Chevy    218.896
 2.  Josef Newgarden     Fisher/Honda    217.835
 3.  Tony Kanaan         Ganassi/Chevy   217.826
 4.  Juan Pablo Montoya  Penske/Chevy    217.724
 5.  Ed Carpenter        Carpenter/Chevy 217.677
 6.  Simon Pagenaud      Schmidt/Honda   217.222
 7.  Scott Dixon         Ganassi/Chevy   217.128
 8.  Justin Wilson       Coyne/Honda     217.007
 9.  James Hinchcliffe   Andretti/Honda  216.967
10.  Carlos Munoz        Andretti/Honda  216.960
11.  Mikhail Aleshin     Schmidt/Honda   216.880
12.  Ryan Hunter-Reay    Andretti/Honda  216.823
13.  Ryan Briscoe        Ganassi/Chevy   216.667
14.  Helio Castroneves   Penske/Chevy    216.591
15.  Charlie Kimball     Ganassi/Chevy   216.151
16.  Takuma Sato         Foyt/Honda      216.064
17.  Marco Andretti      Andretti/Honda  215.697
18.  Sebastien Bourdais  KV/Chevy        214.407
19.  Sebastian Saavedra  KV/Chevy        214.156
20.  Jack Hawksworth     Herta/Honda     214.145
21.  Graham Rahal        Rahal/Honda     213.292
22.  Carlos Huertas      Coyne/Honda     212.191

All drivers use Dallara chassis
Qualifying order set by average speed of two-lap run

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