Power Tops Qualifying At Milwaukee

Will Power places the P1 award sticker on rear wing. [Mark Walczak Photo]

August 16, 2014 – Things change quickly in racing, and one of those rapid turn-arounds occurred Saturday afternoon at the Milwaukee Mile.

Will Power, who was 13th in the day’s combined practice sessions, won the Verizon P1 pole award with a speed some six mph faster than his earlier practice runs.

Points Leader Will Power extends his lead by 1 point after capturing his 3rd pole of the season. [Mark Walczak Photo]

Will Power and the Team Penske crew pose with the pole winning car at the Milwaukee Mile. [Russ Lake Photo]

Tony Kanaan was best of the Ganassi teams, will start second at Milwaukee. [Mark Walczak Photo]

Juan Pablo Montoya starts 3rd in his return to the Milwaukee Mile. [Mark Walczak Photo]

James Hinchcliffe was quickest in both practices prior to an accident late in 2nd practice, starts 13th. [Mark Walczak Photo]

Canadian James Hinchcliffe experienced just the opposite, however, when a crash in afternoon practice took him from quickest overall in practice to 13^th in late afternoon qualifying.

“It’s just a great start to the three-race chase, you could say, for the championship finish,” the series’ point’s leader said. “It’s traditionally a track position race. In practice it was hard to pass, so I could see that in the race you’re going to be in traffic all day.”

Power qualified his Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet at 169.262 mph, with Chip Ganassi Chevrolet pilot Tony Kanaan second at 168.662; tying his best starting spot for this season.

Hinchcliffe, whose crew worked hard to repair the damage from his practice contact with the Turn 2 barrier, didn’t have the same speed advantage he had in practice, putting his repaired Andretti Autosport Honda into Row Seven at a speed of 166.195 mph; faster than his practice runs, but not what he had hoped for.

Starting behind Power and Kanaan in the 22- car field will be Juan Pablo Montoya (PPG Team Penske Chevrolet), Ryan Briscoe (NTT Data Ganassi Chevrolet) and Josef Newgarden (Sarah Fisher/Direct Supply Honda).

“When Will set that fast time, I was surprised because I didn’t think I could do that,” said Kanaan, the 2013 Indy 500 winner. “I knew the track was better than in practice, but that’s typical Milwaukee qualifying. I think we’ve got a chance at winning. We’re starting on the front row and we’ve just got to do our thing.”

The top 13 qualifiers are separated by just 0.7968 sec.

Practice Notes: Hinchcliffe led both the morning and afternoon practice sessions prior to qualifying Saturday but an incident during the second session put his chances for a pole position in jeopardy when he made contact with the Turn 2 barrier after spinning in Turn 1. “I just went in there behind Helio (Castroneves) and we’d just made a change and the car was feeling pretty good. It hadn’t really made any sort of signals that we were loose mid-corner. It just kind of went around. It was a pretty slow rotation-it wasn’t a quick snap. There’s nothing to think anything broke. Hopefully we’ll get it sorted for qualifying,” explained “The Mayor”, whose United Fiber and Data Honda suffered damage to the right rear and light damage to the right front.

Hinchcliffe led the combined practice sessions with a speed of 165.677 mph. Following him was: Ryan Briscoe, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Josef Newgarden and Tony Kanaan.

• It was announced that the teams of Sarah Fisher and Ed Carpenter will merge operations for the 2015 IndyCar season. A press conference giving more details will be held later.
• Hinchcliffe and Scott Dixon will be involved in September testing of the new 2015 Indy Lights car. Testing has been held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval earlier this month, and the two drivers will continue development of the car on the IMS road course and the Milwaukee oval in September.

Paul Gohde

Paul Gohde heard the sound of race cars early in his life.

Growing up in suburban Milwaukee, just north of Wisconsin State Fair Park in the 1950’s, Paul had no idea what “that noise” was all about that he heard several times a year. Finally, through prodding by friends of his parents, he was taken to several Thursday night modified stock car races on the old quarter-mile dirt track that was in the infield of the one-mile oval -and he was hooked.

The first Milwaukee Mile event that he attended was the 1959 Rex Mays Classic won by Johnny Thomson in the pink Racing Associates lay-down Offy built by the legendary Lujie Lesovsky. After the 100-miler Gohde got the winner’s autograph in the pits, something he couldn’t do when he saw Hank Aaron hit a home run at County Stadium, and, again, he was hooked.

Paul began attending the Indianapolis 500 in 1961, and saw A. J. Foyt’s first Indy win. He began covering races in 1965 for Racing Wheels newspaper in Vancouver, WA as a reporter/photographer and his first credentialed race was Jim Clark’s historic Indy win.Paul has also done reporting, columns and photography for Midwest Racing News since the mid-sixties, with the 1967 Hoosier 100 being his first big race to report for them.

He is a retired middle-grade teacher, an avid collector of vintage racing memorabilia, and a tour guide at Miller Park. Paul loves to explore abandoned race tracks both here and in Europe, with the Brooklands track in Weybridge England being his favorite. Married to Paula, they have three adult children and two cats.

Paul loves the diversity of all types of racing, “a factor that got me hooked in the first place.”

racingnation.com

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