Scott Sharp surprised the IndyCar Series field by winning the pole for Saturday night's 550 kilometre race at the Texas Motor Speedway. Driving for Rahal Letterman Racing, Sharp picked up his first pole since August of 2001 at the Kentucky Speedway.

“Pole sitter! It's been a long time since someone has said that (to me),” said Sharp who turned a lap of 215.260 miles per hour as the last qualifier to run. “We've been a little behind, no doubt, this year. Anyone that is not one of the top three teams (Penske, Ganassi, Andretti Green) is a little behind.”

Sharp thanked his team for doing a lot of hard work over the off-season and acknowledged RLR spent a lot of effort in the wind tunnel and on the seven post shaker rig to speed up their development of the Dallara chassis.

“Some of the things we did really loosened us up pretty good for Indy, but those are the kind of things that work better on a banked track and we showed that is has (here at Texas),” he said. “The minute the car rolled off the trailer it has been right on.”

Prior to tonight, Sharp's best starting position had been just eleventh, making his pole position run a full ten spot improvement.

Sam Hornish, Jr., was second quickest with a best lap of 214.518mph, that gives Penske Racing their 19th front row start in the past 21 IndyCar Series events.

“We thought we would be able to run somewhere between 213.9 and 214.4, so we were a little better than expected,” said Hornish. “Obviously we didn't have enough to get the job done, but I'm real proud of the Penske guys. We would much rather win tomorrow than today.”

Andretti Green Racing swept the second row with Tony Kanaan and Dario Franchitti, while Danica Patrick will come from the sixth spot.

Kanaan thought he could have been even better. “Our run was okay. Being the first one to qualify is a bit tough because as time goes by, it gets cooler and cooler, and I think the track conditions changed a little bit after my run to make it a little quicker.”

Marco Andretti, in 12th, again failed to keep pace with his three team-mates as his slumping sophomore run continues. Luckily for Andretti starting position can be fairly unimportant at Texas, where the ability to draft to the front can override slower stand alone speed.

“This is Texas and I can tell you that qualifying really doesn't matter,” said Kanaan who won here in the spring of 2004. “It's going to be an exciting race and I'm starting next to my team-mate. (My) car will make it to the front soon enough.”

Infrequent runner Jon Herb qualified 14th, a solid performance for a team making just their second start of 2007. Herb finished 32nd in the Indy 500, crashing out after 51 laps.

The only true rookie in the field, Milka Duno, continued to struggle as she ran nearly nine tenth's of a second slower than the pole sitter, and three tenths slower than 19th position.

Scott Dixon's Ganassi team was unable to repair his primary car so he qualified his back up car into the seventh position. Ironically that was better than team-mate, Dan Wheldon, who ran tenth.

The Bombardier Learjet 550k will start at 8:30pm (Central US Time) on Saturday evening.

Texas qualifying times
1. (8) Scott Sharp, Dallara-Honda, 215.260
2. (6) Sam Hornish Jr., Dallara-Honda, 214.518
3. (27) Dario Franchitti, Dallara-Honda, 214.411
4. (11) Tony Kanaan, Dallara-Honda, 213.844
5. (3) Helio Castroneves, Dallara-Honda, 213.327
6. (7) Danica Patrick, Dallara-Honda, 213.274
7. (9) Scott Dixon, Dallara-Honda, 212.980
8. (17) Jeff Simmons, Dallara-Honda, 212.794
9. (2) Tomas Scheckter, Dallara-Honda, 212.716
10. (10) Dan Wheldon, Dallara-Honda, 212.665
11. (14) Darren Manning, Dallara-Honda, 212.516
12. (26) Marco Andretti, Dallara-Honda, 212.268
13. (4) Vitor Meira, Dallara-Honda, 212.028
14. (19) Jon Herb, Dallara-Honda, 211.518
15. (55) Kosuke Matsuura, Dallara-Honda, 210.731
16. (20) Ed Carpenter, Dallara-Honda, 210.397
17. (15) Buddy Rice, Dallara-Honda, 210.352
18. (22) A.J. Foyt IV, Dallara-Honda, 210.332
19. (5) Sarah Fisher, Dallara-Honda, 210.172
20. (23) Milka Duno, Dallara-Honda, 207.626

ORS / CAPSIS International