LOS ANGELES, United States (AFP) Friday 6/3/2016 —France’s Simon Pagenaud resumed his assault on the IndyCar Series championship on Friday, capturing pole position for the first race in this weekend’s double-header in Detroit.
Pagenaud’s fast lap in the Fast Six, the last of three rounds of knockout qualifying on the 2.35-mile (3.78 Km) temporary street course, was 1min 14.9166sec.
He edged Penske team-mate Helio Castroneves of Brazil by 0.0119 of a second and led a Penske sweep of the first three qualifying positions.
“I knew the car would be good here because of the way it was in Long Beach (where he qualified third and won the April 17 race),” said Pagenaud, whose first of seven career IndyCar wins came at Detroit’s Belle Isle in 2013. “Just great that we could extract the lap time out of it.
“Obviously there was a bit of strategy on our side with the Firestone tires,” he added. “We chose to go on the black Firestone tires (in the Firestone Fast Six). They’re working really well for us and it paid off, so I’m really, really delighted.”
Pagenaud had a three-race winning streak snapped when he finished 19th in the 100th Running of the Indianapolis 500 on May 29. The 32-year-old Frenchman hasn’t started worse than third on any road or street course in 2016.
He brought a 57-point championship lead into this weekend, which features the only doubleheader on the 2016 schedule.
Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya will start third. Canadian James Hinchcliffe, Indy 500 runner-up Carlos Munoz of Colombia and reigning IndyCar champion Scott Dixon of New Zealand rounded out the top six qualifiers.
The first race of the weekend’s double-header is on Saturday and the second on Sunday.
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