WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. (AP) -- Scott Dixon won the IndyCar pole at Watkins Glen International on Saturday for the Grand Prix at The Glen in a penalty-filled affair.
Fastest in all three practices, Dixon topped the Fast Six with a track-record time of 1 minute, 22.5259 seconds at 147.008 mph. It was Dixon's second pole of the season and 25th of his career, tying him with Paul Tracy for 11th all-time.
Will Power, second in points to Team Penske teammate Simon Pagenaud, will start second, followed by Sebastien Bourdais, Helio Castroneves, Tony Kanaan, and Max Chilton.
Pagenaud failed to make the final six for the first time this season and will start seventh. He leads Power by 28 points with two races left in the season.
Power was second-fastest in morning practice and went to the top of his group late in the opening 10-minute qualifying session. Max Chilton, Pagenaud, Josef Newgarden, RC Enerson and Mikhail Aleshin also made the cut.
James Hinchcliffe initially advanced but lost his fastest lap because he spun and affected the progress of Power during the session, allowing Aleshin to sneak in. Alexander Rossi, Conor Daly, Ryan Hunter-Reay, and Spencer Pigot also did not advance.
Graham Rahal, last week's winner at Texas, also was penalized for interference and did not advance.
"It was a crazy session for all, with people getting tossed and stuff," Dixon said. "Just happy we scraped through. There was definitely a lot of chaos during qualifying with people getting pulled back out of the group they had transferred into."
Castroneves, a three-time pole winner at The Glen, paced the second group. Takuma Sato went off course in the famed boot section of the track to bring out a red flag during the session. Sato's penalty was the loss of his two fastest laps and he also failed to advance.
Aleshin, comfortably in the top six late in the second round, lost his chance to advance when he was penalized for impeding Juan Pablo Montoya, losing his two fastest laps, and did not advance to the final round.
Teams struggled to find the right balance with both the red and black tires on the newly paved surface at The Glen. The red compound is softer, grippier and usually faster, but on this day the harder compound in the blacks proved the better choice.
