Sonoma, CA (SportsNetwork.com) – Will Power added a bonus point to his championship lead in the IndyCar Series by winning the pole for Sunday’s race at Sonoma Raceway.<\/p>\n
Power, who now holds a 40-point advantage over second-place and Team Penske teammate Helio Castroneves, made a lap around this 2.385-mile, 12-turn Northern California road course in 1 minute, 17.4126 seconds. It’s the fourth time Power has won the pole at this track. He started first in three consecutive races here from 2010-12.<\/p>\n
“It’s a track-position race and starting on pole puts us in a good position,” Power said. “If it’s a normal sort of strategy, we’ve put ourselves in a great position to win the race. But you know how these races go. You’ve got to get everything right on race day, and we’re going to try and do that.”<\/p>\n
Sonoma is the penultimate race of the 2014 IndyCar season. The series will conclude its year on Aug. 30 at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California.<\/p>\n
Power won at Sonoma and Fontana last year. Fontana, a 2-mile oval, carries double points.<\/p>\n
“Every point counts, but there’s a lot of points on the table and lots of racing left,” Power noted. “I just have to focus on the job at hand.”<\/p>\n
Power is the only driver with multiple IndyCar victories at Sonoma. He won back-to-back races at this track from 2010-11. He finished second here two years ago.<\/p>\n
Last Sunday, Power started on the pole and led 229 of 250 laps for the victory at The Milwaukee Mile.<\/p>\n
Castroneves qualified sixth for Sunday’s 85-lap race at Sonoma with a lap in 1:18.8771.<\/p>\n
“We know we have a very good car, and hopefully we’ll have a good race,” Castroneves said. “You have to be aggressive in a way that puts you in position going to the last race to win the championship.”<\/p>\n
Josef Newgarden will start alongside Power on the front row after posting a lap at 1:17.7318.<\/p>\n
Scott Dixon, the 2013 IndyCar champion, qualified third, followed by James Hinchcliffe and Ryan Briscoe.<\/p>\n
Sebastien Bourdais, Tony Kanaan, rookie Carlos Munoz and Ryan Hunter-Reay completed the top-10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sonoma, CA (SportsNetwork.com) – Will Power added a bonus point to his championship lead in the IndyCar Series by winning the pole for Sunday’s race at Sonoma Raceway. Power, who now holds a 40-point advantage over second-place and Team Penske teammate Helio Castroneves, made a lap around this 2.385-mile, 12-turn Northern California road course in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[329],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-indy-racing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22529\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}