Iowa Corn 300 qualifying results

NEWTON, Iowa – Helio Castroneves and Tony Kanaan, longtime friends and rivals, will start from the front row in the Iowa Corn 300 tonight.

Castroneves posted a two-lap average speed of 183.480 mph (35.0817 seconds) on the .894-mile oval to earn his third Verizon P1 Award of the season and 44th of his Indy car career. He is fourth on the all-time list.

NBCSN’s telecast of the 300-lap race starts at 7:30 p.m. ET. 

On July 12 at The Milwaukee Mile, Castroneves started from the rear of the 24-car grid after a qualifying rules violation. He charged through the field over the 250 laps to finish second.

“The Hitachi car was certainly strong,” said Castroneves, driving the No. 3 Hitachi team Penske Chevrolet. “We proved (last week) that when we have a good car we can come from the back to the front. Now, hopefully, we stay in front and never look back.”

Kanaan posted a two-lap average of 183.125 mph (35.1497 seconds) for his first front-row start of the season. Kanaan, driving the No. 10 Fusion Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet, has finished second in two of the past four races and has placed on the podium the previous five races at Iowa Speedway.

"Things happen very fast here, so the race is never boring. It goes really quick, not just because of the shortness of the track, but the nature of the race," said Kanaan, who will make his 246th consecutive start. "I think this year with the new aero kits, more downforce, so on, I think it's going to be the most physical race we had on an oval. I don't remember using this much effort in a long time. So it's going to be hard."

Verizon IndyCar Series championship points leader Juan Pablo Montoya (182.707 mph) in the No. 2 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet will share Row 2 with Scott Dixon (182.357) in the No. 9 Target Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet. Dixon is 54 points behind Montoya in the standings.

Sebastien Bourdais, who won at The Milwaukee Mile, will start from the last row after the No. 11 Team Mistic E-Cigs-KVSH Racing Chevrolet made contact with the Turn 2 SAFER Barrier on his qualification attempt.

"There was enough grip on the new tires to slow the motion of going rearwards, but there was no coming back from that one," he said. "Straight away on the out lap  I saw I was loose, so I went max full stiff on the front bar and just went to the right on the weight jacker as much as I could. I thought it would be all right, but it wasn’t. It just stepped out on the bump (in Turns 1 and 2) and never came back. I’m very lucky that I hit (the wall) square. Just damaged the rear and nothing else, but that’s not what we wanted to do, for sure.”