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Power On Pole
By Andrew Cutler
October 25 2008
The fans at Surfers Paradise should have now an extra reason to be excited about Sunday's (thier time) IndyCar exhibition race: the two Australian drivers in the series will start from 1st & 3rd positions. Furthermore, they are split by this year's series champion, a New Zealander.

A rain storm hit the area about 30 minutes prior to qualifying, making for high anxiety and difficult set-up choices during the knockout qualifying sessions. Groved "wet" tires were the preferred choice of most in the first group in Round 1 but, by the time that the second group took to the track, many were chancing the drying conditions on slicks. By Rounds 2 & 3 everyone was on dry tires. While nobody took any hard shunts into the wall, there were a few who had some "close" moments!

When it all was over, home countryman Will Power had put his KV Racing Technology/Team Australia #8 car on the pole with a lap around the 2.795 mile street course at just under 1:35 minutes. This is Power's third consecutive pole at Surfers, as he previously drove in the '06 & '07 CCWS versions of this race. While qualifying at Surfers has been good to him in the past, the race itself hasn't, & he has yet to notch a top-ten finish here.

"It was quite a difficult session, to be honest" he told repoters afterwards. "I went out there and half the track was wet and half the track was dry. It was a matter of getting through each round and in the last round it was all dry.

"It was back to what I knew quite well. On the last lap, I backed off out and made sure I got a good run in. I'm very happy for the team. We turned up with a pretty good car out of the box and the guys did great work. Hopefully we can get it done this weekend, because that's what we've been trying to do for the last three years."

Here is the starting grid for Surfers Paradise:

http://www.indycar.com/news/2008/surfers/2008_ics_surfers_starting_grid.pdf

The race begins at 10:30 pm ET on Saturday/2:30 am GMT on Sunday. I will provide a link to the IndyCar website at the top of my forum board, where they will have a live streaming video feed of the warm-up session at 6:30pm ET/10:30pm GMT, and (hopefully) race coverage, which should begin at 10pm ET/2 am GMT.   

 

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