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Kanaan Zooms To IndyCar Pole At Richmond

RICHMOND, June 27 – Tony Kanaan zoomed to the pole position for the SunTrust Indy Challenge at Richmond International Raceway. His average speed for the four laps around the challenging .75-mile oval was 167.876 miles per hour.

Saturday’s 300-lap race will be the ninth event of the 2008 IndyCar Series season.

As usual, Kanaan drove the brightly colored Team 7-Eleven car fielded by the powerhouse Andretti Green Racing team.

With teammate Marco Andretti holding the provisional pole, Kanaan took advantage of feedback from his teammate to secure his 10th career pole and second of the season.

“I had the advantage of going out last of my teammates. We made an adjustment based on Marco’s feedback and I was able to make my car a little bit quicker than his,” Kanaan said. “I have to thank him and my team, for we nailed it.”

Regarding the starting position and the upcoming race, Kanaan added, “If there’s a race I could chose to start first, it would be here. You either love this place or you hate it and I have a lot of fun here. But starting on the pole doesn’t mean a thing when our friends at the track added 50 extra laps to the race.”

Andretti earned the second starting position with a lap of 167.795 mph. He drove the Blockbuster car owned by AGR. “It was close out there but if you are going to get beat, it is good to get beat by not only a teammate but a good friend,” Andretti said. “I didn’t know how I would stack up in qualifying. But I am looking forward to the race as Tony and I have put together good race cars.”

Looking ahead to the race, the young driver said, “Ideally our cars will be handling well from the start and we can march forward. We will try not to take the air off each other and we will work well together.”

Rookie sensation Graham Rahal grabbed the third starting position with a speed of 167.250 and Indianapolis 500 winner Scott Dixon earned the fourth spot with a speed of 167.120.

“Everything really came together for us in qualifying,” Rahal said. “We’ve been struggling all weekend and we made a bunch of changes. I figured we would be close to Justin’s (teammate Justin Wilson) time (23rd on the grid) but when I went out there, the car was really good.”

Said Dixon, “We (Dan Wheldon and I) think we left a lot on the table. Both of the Target cars are going to be close. It was so hot today and anytime you have have those temperatures, you’ll have understeer.”

Row three qualifiers were 500 winners Buddy Rice and Dan Wheldon.

Hideki Mutoh and A. J. Font IV took fourth row honors with Bruno Junqueira and Oriol Servia rounding out the top-10 qualifiers.

Ryan Briscoe, John Andretti, Ed Carpenter and Danica Patrick were 11th through 14th and a dejected Helio Castroneves qualified far back in 18th place.

Twenty-four of the 26 entrants took a qualification run with Ryan Hunter-Reay, who had the fastest car in the first practice session, forced to the sidelines with electrical problems. Enrique Bernoldi also failed to take a run.

Bernoldi spun during practice, damaging his Sangari Conquest Racing entry when he hit the outside wall exiting turn 4. Also, Hideki Mutoh ran into Scott Lynch, the team’s fueler, coming into his pit box. Lynch was treated at the infield medical center for a broken toe and a foot contusion.

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