» IndyCars: Carpenter wins shock Indy 500 pole

Ed Carpenter has caused a major upset by winning pole position for this year’s Indianapolis 500.

The field’s only owner/driver qualified fifth-quickest ahead of the ‘Fast 9’ shootout for pole, before putting together a four-lap average speed effort of 228.762mph to claim top spot and a cool $100,000 prize.

While it may have been a day of upset performances in ‘Pole Day’, it was no surprise that the Andretti Autosports squad got all five of its entries into the ‘Fast 9’, having been the pacesetters virtually all the way through the many days of practice at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

But the biggest shock was who emerged quickest of this quintet: rookie driver Carlos Munoz – making his IndyCar Series debut – was second-quickest overall, while the ever-improving Marco Andretti will start from the outside of the front row.

The ‘Fast 9’ session saw a few of the favourites struggle. Will Power, who was quickest in the provisional qualifying session, started his four-lap run strongly, only to fade over the next three laps and slip to sixth-quickest.

His Penske teammate and Indianapolis 500 rookie AJ Allmendinger managed a superb fifth-fastest in the team’s #2 Chevrolet-powered entry, one spot behind EJ Viso, who was fourth-fastest in his Andretti/HVM entry.

The third row of the grid will comprise reigning champion Ryan Hunter-Reay, the third Penske of Helio Castroneves and the final Andretti of James Hinchcliffe.

With ‘Pole Day’ determining the top-24 places on the 33-car grid, there were few great surprises, apart from the relatively uncompetitive showing from reigning racewinners, Chip Ganassi Racing, whose three full-time cars could manage no better than the sixth row of the grid.

Takuma Sato was another who failed to hit the qualifying heights that he has managed in recent rounds. The Japanese driver managed just the eighteenth-quickest time in his AJ Foyt Honda.

The Rahal Letterman Lanigan squad had a poor Saturday, only getting one of its three entries (that being James Jakes) into the ‘Pole Day’ reckoning, while Graham Rahal, Michel Jourdain Jr

IndyCar returnee Ryan Briscoe scraped into the top-24 on his one-off outing in a fourth Chip Ganassi entry, while series regulars Tristan Vautier (SPH Racing) and Sebastian Saavedra (Dragon Racing) failed to make the provisional qualifying cut and will have to rely on a solid performance on ‘Bump Day’ to make it onto the grid at all.

With the entry list confirmed at 34 cars following Katherine Legge’s announcement that she had secured a last-minute drive with SPH Racing, one of the ‘Bump Day’ drivers will find their 2013 Indianapolis 500 dreams over.

2013 IndyCar Series Indianapolis 500 ‘Pole Day’ Qualifying Results:

	Driver	Entry / Team	Result
1.	Ed Carpenter	Ed Carpenter Racing	228.762mph
2.	Carlos Muñoz	Andretti Autosport	228.342mph
3.	Marco Andretti	Andretti Autosport	228.261mph
4.	E.J. Viso	Team Venzuela / Andretti	228.150mph
5.	A.J. Allmendinger	Team Penske	228.099mph
6.	Will Power	Team Penske	228.087mph
7.	Ryan Hunter-Reay	Andretti Autosport	227.904mph
8.	Hélio Castroneves	Team Penske	227.762mph
9.	James Hinchcliffe	Andretti Autosport	227.070mph
10.	JR Hildebrand	Panther Racing	227.441mph
11.	Alex Tagliani	Barracuda Racing	227.386mph
12.	Tony Kanaan	KV Racing Technology	226.949mph
13.	Oriol Servià	Panther / Dreyer & Reinbold	226.814mph
14.	Justin Wilson	Dale Coyne Racing	226.370mph
15.	Sébastien Bourdais	Dragon Racing	226.196mph
16.	Scott Dixon	Chip Ganassi Racing	226.159mph
17.	Dario Franchitti	Chip Ganassi Racing	226.069mph
18.	Takuma Sato	AJ Foyt Enterprises	226.892mph
19.	Charlie Kimball	Chip Ganassi Racing	225.880mph
20.	James Jakes	Rahal Letterman Lanigan	225.809mph
21.	Simon Pagenaud	Schmidt Peterson Hamilton Racing	225.674mph
22.	Townsend Bell	Panther Racing	225.643mph
23.	Ryan Briscoe	Chip Ganassi Racing	225.265mph
24.	Simona de Silvestro	KV Racing Technology	225.226mph
DNQ.	Josef Newgarden	Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing	225.210mph
DNQ.	Ana Beatriz	Dale Coyne Racing	225.117mph
DNQ.	Graham Rahal	Rahal Letterman Lanigan	224.950mph
DNQ.	Sebastián Saavedra	Dragon Racing	224.656mph
DNQ.	Tristan Vautier	Schmidt Peterson Hamilton Racing	224.156mph
DNQ.	Buddy Lazier	Lazier Partners Racing	223.073mph
DNQ.	Michel Jourdain Jr	Rahal Letterman Lanigan	218.329mph
DNQ.	Conor Daly	AJ Foyt Enterprises	Waved Off
DNQ.	Pippa Mann	Dale Coyne Racing	No Attempt
DNQ.	Katherine Legge	Schmidt Peterson Hamilton	No Attempt