» IndyCars: Power on pole in Texas

Having suffered a mix of appalling luck and indifferent form, Will Power has finally had some good fortune come his way. The Australian – hardly considered a specialist on oval circuits – has claimed pole position for Saturday night’s race at the Texas Motor Speedway with a dominant display around the 1.5-mile oval.

Power’s performance has put Team Penske in prime position to break its winless run in 2013, and given the manner in which he crushed the opposition with a two-lap average almost 2mph quicker than anyone else, the prospects look good so far.

But ovals have never been the Toowoomba-born driver’s forté, and his big threat could come from Marco Andretti. The third-generation Andretti racer has shown a red hot turn of speed at almost all venues to-date this year, and a front-row start could well be his ticket to cracking his first win of the year.

Despite his early qualifying run, Andretti actually held provisional pole until he was ultimately unseated by Power, with his effort keeping the equally-fancied likes of Scott Dixon, Tony Kanaan and Hélio Castroneves at bay.

It was a great qualifying result for the Andretti Autosport stable. Reigning champion Ryan Hunter-Reay qualified third-quickest, while EJ Viso was just two spots further back and one spot behind Dario Franchitti, whose Detroit qualifying form carried over to this vastly different venue.

Indy 500 winner Kanaan was rather more disappointing. After a blistering opening lap, the KV Racing driver lost 3mph on his second tour and tumbled to an eventual fifteenth.

After its drivers had race-winning form a week ago, Dale Coyne Racing came crashing down to earth, with series returnee Pippa Mann and Justin Wilson running well off the pace and clocking the slowest times of the session.

That was at least a better result than Takuma Sato and Tristan Vautier, who were unable to demonstrate their qualifying form, with both being delayed while their mechanics fitted a new gearbox and Honda engine, respectively.

2013 IndyCar Series Firestone Texas 550 Final Qualifying Results:

	Driver	Entry / Team	Average Speed
1.	Will Power	Team Penske	219.182mph
2.	Marco Andretti	Andretti Autosport	217.553mph
3.	Ryan Hunter-Reay	Andretti Autosport	217.524mph
4.	Dario Franchitti	Chip Ganassi Racing	217.504mph
5.	E.J. Viso	Team Venzuela / Andretti	217.244mph
6.	Hélio Castroneves	Team Penske	217.100mph
7.	Josef Newgarden	Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing	216.693mph
8.	Charlie Kimball	Chip Ganassi Racing	216.570mph
9.	Ed Carpenter	Ed Carpenter Racing	216.552mph
10.	James Jakes	Rahal Letterman Lanigan	216.487mph
11.	Scott Dixon	Chip Ganassi Racing	216.447mph
12.	Simona de Silvestro	KV Racing Technology	216.396mph
13.	James Hinchcliffe	Andretti Autosport	216.248mph
14.	Simon Pagenaud	Schmidt Peterson Hamilton Racing	215.727mph
15.	Tony Kanaan	KV Racing Technology	215.474mph
16.	Alex Tagliani	Barracuda Racing	215.406mph
17.	Sébastien Bourdais	Dragon Racing	214.839mph
18.	Oriol Servià	Panther Racing	214.586mph
19.	Graham Rahal	Rahal Letterman Lanigan	213.888mph
20.	Sebastián Saavedra	Dragon Racing	213.217mph
21.	Pippa Mann	Dale Coyne Racing	212.785mph
22.	Justin Wilson	Dale Coyne Racing	207.805mph
23.	Tristan Vautier	Schmidt Peterson Hamilton Racing	no time
24.	Takuma Sato	AJ Foyt Enterprises	no time