After one rained-out practice session and another stopped by fog, IndyCar’s drivers finally got to take the track for qualifying Saturday afternoon. After the three rounds of qualifying were over, Penske Racing’s Helio Castroneves had set the fastest lap, breaking a two-year streak by teammate Will Power.
“We didn’t have practice this morning. The red tires when we put them on the car, it changed completely the set-up,” Castroneves told NBC Sports. “We were very lucky to make the first one but then my man [race engineer] Ron Ruzewski made some adjustments, and Bam! We made it to the second qualifying.
“We understand there were some issues with the other guys, but our theme this year is, we’re not going to let the environment control us so, do our thing, do what we need to do, and it’s going to pay and today, again, it’s paying off.”
There were certainly issues with other drivers—two of Castroneves’ teammates didn’t set a second-session qualifying time. Ryan Briscoe’s car wouldn’t go into gear at the start of the second session, and Will Power got caught out by a hasty red flag brought on by Andretti Autosport’s Ryan Hunter-Reay spinning near the end of the sessions. Hunter-Reay had his best two laps erased for causing a red flag, setting him well back on the grid.
Power was very disappointed to have his two-season pole streak broken, but even more disappointed to be cut off during a hot lap on a track like Barber where passing can be so difficult.
“I was really surprised when it went yellow; I didn’t think IndyCar would do that,” Power said. “They let everyone else finish their laps and there were a couple more cars to go through and we didn’t get to do it. Ah man—real disappointing because qualifying is everything around here. I don’t think they should have gone yellow—at least let us finish the lap.”
Andretti Autosport got at least one car into a good grids d spot; James Hinchcliffe turned in the second-fastest time. The second row will hold two Honda-powered cars: Scott Dixon’s Target-Ganassi Honda and Mike Conway’s ABC Supply Co./ Foyt Honda—quite an improvement from St. Petersburg where the quickest Honda qualified sixth.
JR Hildebrand, scoring Panther Racing’s best non-oval-qualifying spot since 2006, will start fifth. Tony Kanaan put his KV Racing Chevy into sixth spot. Kanaan did the final qualifying session on the harder Black Firestone tires, to save a set of reds in better shape for the race.
The IndyCar Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama takes the green flag at 2 p.m. ET on Sunday April 1. Tickets for the event are still available through the Barber Motorsports Park website.
The race will be televised on the NBC Sports network.
| Qualifying Results 2012 IndyCar Alabama Grand Prix | ||||||
|
| Car | Driver | Sponsor/ Team | Engine | Time | Speed |
| 1 | 3 | Helio Castroneves | AAA Penske | Chevrolet | 01:10.4768 | 117.485 |
| 2 | 27 | James Hinchcliffe | GoDaddy.com Andretti Autosport | Chevrolet | 01:10.5222 | 117.410 |
| 3 | 9 | Scott Dixon | Target Chip Ganassi | Honda | 01:10.5291 | 117.398 |
| 4 | 14 | Mike Conway | ABC Supply Co./A.J. Foyt | Honda | 01:10.8791 | 116.819 |
| 5 | 4 | JR Hildebrand | National Guard Panther Racing | Chevrolet | 01:11.0759 | 116.495 |
| 6 | 11 | Tony Kanaan | GEICO-Mouser Electronics KV Racing | Chevrolet | 01:11.3740 | 116.009 |
| 7 | 5 | E.J. Viso | PDVSA-CITGO-KV Racing | Chevrolet | 01:11.5257 | 115.763 |
| 8 | 38 | Graham Rahal | Service Central Ganassi | Honda | 01:11.5841 | 115.668 |
| 9 | 12 | Will Power | Verizon Penske | Chevrolet | 01:12.0098 | 114.984 |
| 10 | 77 | Simon Pagenaud | Schmidt-Hamilton HP Motorsports | Honda | 01:14.2839 | 111.464 |
| 11 | 28 | Ryan Hunter-Reay | DHL/Sun Drop Andretti Autosport | Chevrolet | No Time | No Speed |
| 12 | 2 | Ryan Briscoe | Hitachi Penske | Chevrolet | No Time | No Speed |
| 13 | 26 | Marco Andretti | RC Cola Andretti Autosport | Chevrolet | 01:10.6512 | 117.195 |
| 14 | 8 | Rubens Barrichello | BM-Embrase KV Racing | Chevrolet | 01:10.5664 | 117.336 |
| 15 | 67 | Josef Newgarden | Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing | Honda | 01:10.6851 | 117.139 |
| 16 | 15 | Takuma Sato | Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing | Honda | 01:10.6111 | 117.262 |
| 17 | 7 | Sebastien Bourdais | Lotus Dragon Racing | Lotus | 01:10.7255 | 117.072 |
| 18 | 10 | Dario Franchitti | Clorox Target Chip Ganassi | Honda | 01:10.6749 | 117.156 |
| 19 | 18 | Justin Wilson | Sonny’s BBQ Dale Coyne Racing | Honda | 01:11.5524 | 115.719 |
| 20 | 19 | James Jakes | Boy Scouts of America Dale Coyne Racing | Honda | 01:10.7526 | 117.028 |
| 21 | 78 | Simona de Silvestro | Nuclear Clean Air Energy HVM | Lotus | 01:11.5721 | 115.688 |
| 22 | 83 | Charlie Kimball | NovoLog Flex Pen Novo Nordisk Ganassi | Honda | 01:11.3594 | 116.032 |
| 23 | 98 | Alex Tagliani | Barracuda-BHA | Lotus | 01:12.5778 | 114.084 |
| 24 | 20 | Ed Carpenter | Fuzzy’s Vodka/Ed Carpenter Racing | Chevrolet | 01:11.8672 | 115.213 |
| 25 | 6 | Katherine Legge | TrueCar-Lotus Dragon Racing | Lotus- | 01:13.6457 | 112.430 |
| 26 | 22 | Oriol Servia | Lotus-DRR | Lotus | 01:13.3349 | 112.907 |
