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Power Leads IndyCar Qualifiers At Long Beach

Long Beach, Calif. – Will Power continued to show his strength on road and street courses by taking his third consecutive IZOD IndyCar Series pole in 2011, doing so for Sunday’s Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach. The quiet-spoken Australian scooted around the 1.98-mile street course at a record-breaking speed of 102.582 miles per hour.

For Power in 2011, his qualification performance is perfect and for his career, he now has 19 IndyCar poles to his credit.

Driving the Verizon Team Penske machine, Power gave the acclaimed team its 199th pole in open-wheel racing and its 11th in the last 19 races. At Long Beach, the team has started from the favored point position eight times.

“That was definitely a tough one,” the pole-winner said. “I think Ryan (Hunter-Reay) had me there right until the end. He had a run that was pretty quick, but I think he might have blown the last sector. But we worked very hard for the pole. Qualifying first today I think we put ourselves in the best position possible (for the race).”

Hunter-Reay, the 2010 race winner, made a valiant attempt to topple Power from pole but came up short by 8/100ths of a second. His speed was 102.469 mph.

“I really wanted that pole, and it was my fault I didn’t get it,” Hunter-Reay said of his run in the Team DHL/Sun Drop Citrus Soda entry. “Obviously, I like this place, but I am pretty disappointed. But the best thing is it’s a repeat of last year; we’re starting second and we won from there last year, so hopefully we can repeat.”

Mike Conway earned the third starting spot in the Window World Cares entry at 101.733 mph. “I am pretty happy considering the last couple days have been difficult trying to get the car dialed in. It just seemed to come together in qualifying.”

Justin Wilson will start alongside Conway in the Z-Line Designs/Dreyer & Reinbold Racing car.

Oriol Servia claimed the fifth-fastest time in the Telemundo Newman/Haas Racing machine and Helio Castroneves surprised himself by advancing to sixth place in the AAA of Southern California entry of Team Penske.

Rounding out the top-10 qualifiers were Target Chip Ganassi teammates Dario Franchitti and Scott Dixon followed by Alex Tagliani and Tony Kanaan.

Other notables in the qualifying field were Ryan Briscoe (12th), Danica Patrick (20th), Sebastian Bourdais (21st) and Paul Tracy (25th).

The 85-lap Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach will be telecast live by VERSUS at 3:30 p.m. ET.

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