Dario Franchitti Secures Pole For 2012 Milwaukee IndyFest

Dario Franchitti has stormed to his second pole position of the 2012 IZOD IndyCar season for the Milwaukee IndyFest, only +0.1157 seconds quicker than fellow countryman Justin Wilson. The reigning Series Champion clocked a combined time of a 43.3100, and will line-up in pole for the first time since Long Beach back in April.

Although Justin Wilson qualified 2nd, after his superlative victory last time out at Texas, the Briton will unfortunately endure a 10-place grid penalty due to an unscheduled engine change prior to the weekend’s events. This therefore promotes Dallas-born Ryan Hunter-Reay to 2nd position on the grid, with an all-Brazilian second row of Rubens Barrichello and Helio Castroneves close behind.

Championship leader Will Power qualified 4th, however he too has been hit with a 10-place grid drop. The Australian driver also completed an unscheduled engine change, and will therefore line-up 14th on the grid alongside Alex Tagliani, who secured pole last time out for the Firestone 550 at Texas.

The session ran to the traditional oval qualifying rules, in which each driver individually completes a warm-up lap followed by two timed laps. This then creates an average lap speed and combined aggregate times which subsequently determines the grid. The qualifying session ran incident free, although Castroneves had to back off extensively on his second timed lap after the Penske driver ran loose and hit the engines rev limiter.

“I am very pleased as much as I am surprised.” Explained Dario Franchitti, “That’s quite a turnaround from practice. Practice is one thing, qualifying is another and then there is the race. I expect tomorrow is going to be tough, especially at the end of a full stint on those Firestone tires. It’s going to be a long [and] exciting day tomorrow and hopefully the Cottonelle car will be up front at the end of the afternoon. This is always an interesting track and we’ll see if we can get it done.”

Mike Conway, Takuma Sato, Josef Newgarden and Ryan Briscoe have also had to suffer 10-place grid penalties, making the grid look slightly different to how qualifying ended. Dario Franchitti won last year at Milwaukee, and will undeniably be striving to do so again this year.

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