» IndyCars: Power wins São Paulo pole

Will Power’s excellent start to the 2012 IndyCar Series championship season continues, with the Australian claiming pole position for Sunday’s fourth round of the championship, the Itaipava Indy 300 on the streets of São Paulo.

The Penske driver – who was the only member of his team to make the final ‘Fast Six’ phase of qualifying – narrowly edged out Chip Ganassi duo Dario Franchitti and Scott Dixon for top spot, earning him a nice $10,000 purse and a bonus championship point for his efforts.

Franchitti backed up his Long Beach qualifying form with a front-row berth, just missing out on the pole by four-hundredths of a second around the bumpy street circuit. Dixon was a further four-tenths behind.

The Andretti Autosport team enjoyed a good qualifying session, getting three of its drivers into the top-twelve and seeing two of them – James Hinchcliffe and Ryan Hunter-Reay – make the final pole shootout. The pair will start fourth and fifth, respectively.

Dale Coyne Racing driver Justin Wilson also showed how well he’s settled back into the team by qualifying sixth-fastest, making it three Honda and three Chevrolet entries in the top-six.

Josef Newgarden finished ninth-fastest and the fastest rookie driver in his Sarah Fisher Hartman entry, one spot ahead of Ryan Briscoe, who rounded out the top ten.

Plenty of local support and TV viewership did little to help the fortunes of the field’s four Brazilian drivers, with all but knocked out in the first phase of qualifying. KV Racing’s Tony Kanaan was the only one to make it into the second phase of qualifying, but he was slowest of all in that group and will start twelfth.

Team-mate Rubens Barrichello will be disappointed with his 16th-fastest effort on home soil; he starts one spot ahead of Hélio Castroneves, who hit the wall in the day’s earlier practice session.

Making a one-off street circuit appearance before her tilt at the Indianapolis 500, Ana Beatriz qualified her Andretti/Conquest entry 22nd-fastest, and the slowest non-Lotus runner to post a qualifying time.

Takuma Sato will start his Rahal Letterman Lanigan car from the back of the grid, failing to post a time while his mechanics changed his Honda engine.

2012 IndyCar Series Itaipava São Paulo Indy 300 Qualifying Results:

	Driver	Entrant	Result
1.	Will Power	Team Penske	1:21.4045	‘Fast Six’
2.	Dario Franchitti	Chip Ganassi Racing	1:21.4485	‘Fast Six’
3.	Scott Dixon	Chip Ganassi Racing	1:21.8545	‘Fast Six’
4.	James Hinchcliffe	Andretti Autosport	1:21.9956	‘Fast Six’
5.	Ryan Hunter-Reay	Andretti Autosport	1:22.2408	‘Fast Six’
6.	Justin Wilson	Dale Coyne Racing	1:22.2681	‘Fast Six’
7.	Graham Rahal	Chip Ganassi Racing	1:22.0972	Top-12
8.	Mike Conway	AJ Foyt Enterprises	1:22.7082	Top-12
9.	Josef Newgarden	Sarah Fisher Hartman	1:22.7301	Top-12
10.	Ryan Briscoe	Team Penske	1:22.4404	Top-12
11.	Marco Andretti	Andretti Autosport	1:22.8320	Top-12
12.	Tony Kanaan	KV Racing Technology	1:23.1766	Top-12
13.	EJ Viso	KV Racing Technology	1:22.1404	Group 2
14.	Charlie Kimball	Chip Ganassi Racing	1:22.1973	Group 1
15.	James Jakes	Dale Coyne Racing	1:22.380	Group 2
16.	Rubens Barrichello	KV Racing Technology	1:22.3939	Group 1
17.	Hélio Castroneves	Team Penske	1:22.4143	Group 2
18.	JR Hildebrand	Panther Racing	1:22.4321	Group 1
19.	Simon Pagenaud	Schmidt Hamilton	1:22.4354	Group 2
20.	Ed Carpenter	Ed Carpenter Racing	1:22.9424	Group 1
21.	Sébastien Bourdais	Lotus-Dragon Racing	1:23.1331	Group 2
22.	Ana Beatriz	Andretti / Conquest	1:23.2692	Group 1
23.	Oriol Servià	Dreyer & Reinbold	1:23.4509	Group 2
24.	Simona de Silvestro	Lotus-HVM Racing	1:23.6762	Group 1
25.	Katherine Legge	Lotus-Dragon Racing	1:24.6042	Group 1
26.	Takuma Sato	Rahal Letterman Lanigan	no time	Group 2