» IndyCars: Dixon on pole at Detroit

Fresh from finishing runner-up to Chip Ganassi team-mate Dario Franchitti at the Indianapolis 500 less than seven days ago, Scott Dixon has narrowly claimed pole position for the IndyCar Series’ return to Detroit’s Belle Isle circuit.

Dixon narrowly edged out IndyCar Series championship leader Will Power for top spot by just four-hundredths of a second around the twisty parkway circuit.

Some of the more fancied runners struggled with traffic and set-up woes in qualifying, giving the final ‘Fast Six’ session a rather unusual make-up.

Fresh from switching from Lotus to Honda power, Alex Tagliani took his Bryan Herta Autosports entry to the giddy heights of third place. The Canadian will start alongside former ChampCar team-mate and leading rookie driver Simon Pagenaud, who was fourth-fastest in his Schmidt-Hamilton entry. The top-six was rounded by KV Racing’s EJ Viso and Andretti Autosport driver Ryan Hunter-Reay.

Will Power’s Penske stablemates Ryan Briscoe and Hélio Castroneves both missed out on a ‘Fast Six’ appearance, qualifying eighth- and ninth-fastest respectively, with Briscoe glancing the wall in the closing minutes of the second phase of qualifying and damaging his suspension.

The pair will start one place higher on the grid, as seventh-fastest driver Graham Rahal will drop ten places on the grid. The Chip Ganassi driver underwent an engine change following the Sao Paulo race last month, with the grid penalty being applied for this race under the series’ rules.

Another ex-Lotus runner to qualify well was Sébastien Bourdais, who took the sole-remaining Dragon Racing entry (now powered by Chevrolet) to an excellent tenth-fastest, a result that serves to demonstrate how uncompetitive the Lotus powerplant is.

Justin Wilson (Dale Coyne Racing) and Takuma Sato (RLL) both made it into the top-twelve phase of qualifying, with Sato’s performance being the best of his 2012 season to-date.

Managing traffic around this narrow and twisty circuit was always going to be a huge challenge, and qualifying saw several high-profile scalps fail to make it out over the first qualifying hurdle. The likes of Josef Newgarden, James Hinchcliffe, Dario Franchitti, Tony Kanaan and Rubens Barrichello all failed to make the ‘Round 2’ cut.

Marco Andretti was another high-profile failure. He’ll start from the penultimate row of the grid after making some poor set-up choices that drastically worsened the handling of his Dallara DW12.

Franchitti, winner last time out at Indianapolis, hit out at some of the slower runners, particularly Ed Carpenter, who was slowest of the group and over two seconds off the pace of the next-slowest driver. Carpenter is no road or street course racer, and he frustrated many other drivers as he blundered into their path while they were attempting a fast lap.

2012 IndyCar Series Chevrolet Detroit Belle Isle Grand Prix Final Qualifying Results:

	Driver	Entrant	Result
1.	Scott Dixon	Chip Ganassi Racing	1:10.3162	‘Fast Six’
2.	Will Power	Team Penske	1:10.3206	‘Fast Six’
3.	Alex Tagliani	Bryan Herta Autosports	1:10.6684	‘Fast Six’
4.	Simon Pagenaud	Schmidt Hamilton	1:11.8426	‘Fast Six’
5.	EJ Viso	KV Racing Technology	1:11.0852	‘Fast Six’
6.	Ryan Hunter-Reay	Andretti Autosport	1:11.4557	‘Fast Six’
7.	Graham Rahal*	Chip Ganassi Racing	1:10.9434	‘Round 2’
8.	Ryan Briscoe	Team Penske	1:10.9964	‘Round 2’
9.	Hélio Castroneves	Team Penske	1:11.0076	‘Round 2’
10.	Sébastien Bourdais	Dragon Racing	1:11.1624	‘Round 2’
11.	Justin Wilson	Dale Coyne Racing	1:11.3376	‘Round 2’
12.	Takuma Sato	Rahal Letterman Lanigan	1:11.8122	‘Round 2’
13.	Josef Newgarden	Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing	1:12.1068	‘Group 1’
14.	James Hinchcliffe	Andretti Autosport	1:11.6519	‘Group 2’
15.	Dario Franchitti	Chip Ganassi Racing	1:12.3276	‘Group 1’
16.	Mike Conway	AJ Foyt Enterprises	1:11.6521	‘Group 2’
17.	Oriol Servià	Panther / Dreyer & Reinbold	1:12.5754	‘Group 1’
18.	Tony Kanaan	KV Racing Technology	1:11.8080	‘Group 2’
19.	JR Hildebrand	Panther Racing	1:12.5835	‘Group 1’
20.	Rubens Barrichello	KV Racing Technology	1:12.4052	‘Group 2’
21.	Charlie Kimball	Chip Ganassi Racing	1:12.5844	‘Group 1’
22.	Simona de Silvestro*	Lotus-HVM Racing	1:12.6014	‘Group 2’
23.	Ed Carpenter	Ed Carpenter Racing	1:14.8816	‘Group 1’
24.	Marco Andretti	Andretti Autosport	1:12.6531	‘Group 2’
25.	James Jakes	Dale Coyne Racing	1:12.8469	‘Group 2’