IndyCar: Takuma Sato Earns 1st Career Pole at Iowa

Green is unlucky at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, but it seems to be lucky at the Iowa Speedway.

Second year Japanese driver Takuma Sato earned his first career pole for tonight's Iowa Corn 250 in his green No. 5 Lotus Honda.

Sato posted a lap of 180.375 mph in qualifying last night.  This marks the fourth straight top 10 start for Sato this season.

Joining Sato on the front row is fan favorite Danica Patrick.  Danica will be making her best start since Nashville in 2008 where she also started on the outside on the front row.  Danica driving the green No. 7 Go Daddy Honda for Andretti Autosport posted a lap of 180.210 mph.

Defending Race Champion Tony Kanaan will be starting inside of row two in his green No. 82 Geico Honda.  Tony being Sato's teammate at KV Racing made sure the team had two cars in the top three for tonight's race.

Rookie J.R. Hildebrand will make his best start of his career.  He will start alongside Tony Kanaan in row two.  Hildebrand will try and turn his season around with suffering a rough stretch of races the past month.  After wrecking while leading at Indy on the last lap, he was a huge non factor in Texas in both races, and he wrecked coming off of Turn 4 last weekend in Milwaukee.

Row three consists of both guys tied for the series points lead.  Will Power and Dario Franchitti will start next to each other in tonight's race.  You can be sure both guys won't let each other out of their view. 

News and Notes

Tonight's race should be very exciting the whole way though.  The field at Iowa was separated by less than a second. Not to mention, Ganassi Driver Scott Dixon is making his worst start since 2001 (23rd).  It will be fun to watch him work his way through the field tonight.  By the way, Dixon won from 23rd in that race in 2001.

The history of IndyCar racing at Iowa shows the front row isn't much luck to start on.  In the four year history of the Iowa Corn 250, no driver has ever won from the front row.  The best finish for the pole sitter of this race is fourth in 2008.  The best finish for a driver starting second is a second place finish in 2009. 

Finishes for Pole Sitters at Iowa

2007: 10th

2008: Fourth

2009: Seventh

2010: Fifth

Finishes for 2nd Place Starter at Iowa

2007: Eighth

2008: 16th

2009: Second

2010: Sixth

Row two is the row to start in if you want to win this race.  Three out of the four years the race winner has came from row two (third place twice and fourth once).  Last year's winner Tony Kanaan came from 15th to win.  This is a good omen for Tony Kanaan and J.R. Hildebrand.

In last night's final practice session, Alex Tagliani and Takuma Sato made contact with each other on the track.  No word yet on if either driver will need to go to a back up.

Starting Lineup

1. 5 Takuma Sato

2. 7 Danica Patrick

3. 82 Tony Kanaan

4. 4 J.R. Hildebrand (R)

5. 12 Will Power

6. 10 Dario Franchitti

7. 06 James Hinchcliffe (R)

8. 28 Ryan Hunter-Reay

9. 27 Mike Conway

10. 6 Ryan Briscoe

11. 2 Oriol Servia

12. 22 Justin Wilson

13. 3 Helio Castroneves

14. 67 Ed Carpenter

15. 77 Alex Tagliani

16. 14 Vitor Meira

17. 26 Marco Andretti

18. 24 Ana Beatriz (R)

19. 59 E.J. Viso

20. 38 Graham Rahal

21. 83 Charlie Kimball (R)

22. 19 Alex Lloyd

23. 9  Scott Dixon

24. 18 James Jakes (R)

25. 34 Sebastian Saveedra