Edmonton Indy, Qualifying report

So the dust settled on qualifying to find us with a Penske 1-2 with Ryan Briscoe on the pole this time. All the pracitce times and promising runs by some came to nought as the big boys in the Penske cars came to the front. This is not to say that the Big former Champ Car teams were disappointing, which they weren't as the KV drivers are third and fifth on the grid, veteran Oriol Servia being higher on the grid than Will Power this time. The Penske drivers have been great on the last three road courses as they scored a 1-2 last week at Mid-Ohio and Briscoe was the fastest man all day at Watkin's Glen only to lose the race as a result of the cruel hand of fate. Helio Castroneves has been the most consistent driver for most of the season but hasn't been able to get a win while championship leader Scott Dixon, who has not been as quick of late, has continually managed to pop up in the top five to limit the damage done by Helio. Dixon starts fourth while teammate Dan Wheldon will have another tough day, he starts 9th. The other top ten drivers are former Champ Car teams and a big shout out to the Dale Coyne drivers who were nowhere in practice but suddenly popped up in qualifying, both men made in to Q2 and Bruno Junquiera just missed out making final qualifying while rookie Mario Moraes will start a decent 10th. The Newman/Haas/Lanigan boys also did a good job with Justin Wilson making it into the fast six only to have a shunt on his first flying lap in the final session having to settle for sixth. One suspects we will see a lot of him at the front in today's race while teammate Graham Rahal was a solid 8th. If all these former champ car teams and Ganassi an Penske were in the top ten then it leads to the question of what happened to the Andretti-Green driver? The answer is that they had a woeful afternoon. Both Marco Andretti and Tony Kanaan were fast enough to make the first cut but at the end of Q1 Kannan spun off and damaged his engine, unfortunately IRL rules dictate that an engine change means you have to go to the back of the pack and starting near Marty Roth can only be trouble. Marco ended up having a poor Q2 and was slowest in that session, so he will start 12th alongside the surprisingly quick Enrique Bernoldi, who is apparently fighting for his job, he surprised many by making it into Q2 and will start a very impressive 11th. Media favourites and resident hotheads Danica Patrick and Paul Tracy flattered only to decieve and will line up 14th and 15th respectively. Danica was nowhere in practice and so 14th cannot be considered to bad for her while PT was really quick in practice and will be disappinted with 15th although he is ultra agressive and will try to make it through the field, if he can make it through the first corner in one piece. The other Andretti Green dude, Hideki Mutoh was a rather poor 21st and will probably lose a lot of points to Will Power in the rookie of the year points. The rest of the grid is unsurprising with Ryan Hunter Reay 13th, Vitor Meira 16th followed by AJ Foyt IV, Darren Manning, Mario DOminguez, EJ Viso, Mutoh, Buddy Rice, Ed Carpenter, Townsend Bell, Marty Roth, Jaime Camara and the unfortunate TOny Kannan. A word about Marty Roth and his dreadful pace in qualifying. His time of 1:09.049 was more than 8 second off pole and five second slower than the next slowest Jaime Camara. His time is actually slower than the slowest qualifier in the Atlantic series race by 0.6 seconds and has been brutally slow all weekend. The IRL really needs to introduce time controls to weed out the field filling wankers like Roth to be taken seriously. The IRL needs to introduce some sort of time margin for qualifying so that Marty and company will be sent home. On suspects that the IRL may review his racing license at seasons end, not soon enough in this critic's opinion.