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Power, Penske, Chevrolet dominate IndyCar Barber qualifying (VIDEO)

Will Power scored the pole position for Sunday’s Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama, as part of a Team Penske and Chevrolet dominated qualifying session for the third round of the Verizon IndyCar Series season at Barber Motorsports Park (Sunday, 3 p.m. ET, NBCSN).

But with polesitters having finished only 19th and ninth to start 2017 - Power at St. Petersburg and teammate Helio Castroneves at Long Beach - it remains to be seen whether this will translate on Sunday after a weekend where Penske and Chevrolet have struck back after Honda’s fast start. Meanwhile Sebastien Bourdais and James Hinchcliffe have won from 21st and fourth, respectively.

Power’s pole Saturday in the No. 12 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet, at a lap of 1:06.9614 around the 2.3-mile road course is the 46th of his career and fourth at Barber (2010, 2011 and 2014) and he’s won twice here before, in 2011 from pole and in 2012 from ninth on the grid.

“We weren’t good on the used reds, but we worked at it and the car was really good. We did feel a bit heavy in that session but the car was really good. All the credit to the Verizon Team Penske guys. Starting on pole here is important. The weather looks a little bit iffy but it is what it is. That’s all you can do. We’ll try to go out and have fun,” Power told NBCSN’s Kevin Lee.

Penske teammates Castroneves and Simon Pagenaud completed the top three, as Penske and Chevrolet score their third pole in as many races to start the year.

“Man it was just one little blink and you miss it. Long Beach was precision... here was out of control!” Castroneves laughed after coming up just short in second, speaking to NBCSN’s Marty Snider.

Pagenaud told NBCSN’s Katie Hargitt, “We had a great car. The Menards car was fast but we went a little too aggressive for qualifying. We tried, and it was a good battle with Will and Helio.”

Scott Dixon will start fourth, top Honda on the grid, as he goes for his first Barber win and first win of 2017. He’s started between third and fifth in all eight Barber races in his career and has six podiums, all either second or third place.

Long Beach sparring partners Ryan Hunter-Reay and James Hinchcliffe round out the Firestone Fast Six, as Hinchcliffe looks for his second straight win after winning last time out while Hunter-Reay seeks to end a year-and-a-half winless drought and secure his third win at Barber (2013, 2014).

The big surprise from the preliminary rounds of qualifying was second free practice pacesetter Marco Andretti getting bounced out in Q1, as part of an overall struggle for the Andretti Autosport team where he, Takuma Sato and Alexander Rossi all failed to advance. Hunter-Reay was the only driver of that team’s quartet who did.

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Hinchcliffe led the opening round of qualifying in his Group 1, ahead of Tony Kanaan, Josef Newgarden, Mikhail Aleshin, Ed Jones and Max Chilton. Newgarden had an off-and-on moment at Turns 2 and 3 but glided out of the grass without damage to his No. 2 Fitzgerald Glider Kits Chevrolet.

The big surprise from Q1, Group 1 was the failure of Andretti to advance in the No. 27 Andretti Autosport Honda, after another weekend of good practice pace. Andretti missed advancing by just 0.031 of a second (1:07.5405 versus Chilton’s 1:07.5374) and will start 13th on Sunday.

“It takes putting it together. A little too loose there but I should have got it in. With the margin this morning I should be in. This one hurts,” Andretti told NBCSN.

Charlie Kimball and the Ed Carpenter Racing teammates, Spencer Pigot and Zach Veach, also failed to advance from that group.

In Group 2, Q1, a stacked session saw the usual suspects advance - Power, Dixon, Castroneves, Pagenaud, Hunter-Reay and Sebastien Bourdais made it through. Power clocked the only 1:06 lap of Q1 at 1:06.9311.

Left on the outside were Takuma Sato, Carlos Munoz, Alexander Rossi, Conor Daly and Graham Rahal. Rahal will now start 21st and last, and likely will need a strategy gamble to leapfrog his way up the order in his pursuit of a third straight runner-up finish at Barber, or to try to go one spot better and duplicate Bourdais’ last-to-first victory at St. Petersburg.

“We’ve got everything (wrong) this weekend. I had nothing else. There was no more speed in my car,” Rahal lamented to NBCSN. “I put in one miracle lap this morning and couldn’t get within half a second again. We just haven’t been very good this year and haven’t performed at a very high level. We can’t seem to get the tire to bite the road at all.

“For us as a single-car team it’s impossible. We don’t have anyone else to try anything different. St. Pete we struggled. Long Beach we struggled. Here it’s been a struggle all weekend. Something fundamentally might have changed. Starting last on merit, I don’t think I’ve ever done in my career.”

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Q2 saw all four past Barber pole winners, Power, Castroneves, Hunter-Reay and Pagenaud advance through along with Dixon and Hinchcliffe, the latter two continuing their streaks as the only two drivers to make it to every Firestone Fast Six session this season.

Left on the outside looking in were Newgarden, Aleshin, Chilton, Kanaan, Jones and Bourdais. Newgarden missed out by less than a tenth of a second.

Newgarden told NBCSN after his near miss, “We tried to go on the used reds from the first round of qualifying. It was a great call. But today all the Penske cars had great pace and we just missed out. I just couldn’t get quite the speed that I had before.”

Meanwhile points leader Bourdais told NBCSN, “I still don’t know how we even made the Fast 12. We’ve been struggling fighting the understeer and we haven’t made big gains all weekend. We took a big swing at it in qualifying. We tried something different - it didn’t work. But sometimes it’s good to find out when nothing works. It’s been a tough weekend. We have a really good, small group of guys. We just haven’t had it this weekend though.”

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Power got back into the 1:06 bracket on his final lap in the Fast Six, with a time of 1:06.9614 around the 2.3-mile circuit. That supplanted Castroneves’ best time of 1:07.1429, with Pagenaud third in his quest to defend this race win of a year ago at 1:07.3817.

The unofficial grid is below:

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