Fri Mar 28 20:10:42 2008

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Dixon takes IndyCar pole for Homestead opener

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Homestead, FL (Sports Network) - Scott Dixon won the pole for Saturday's GAINSCO Auto Insurance Indy 300 at the Homestead-Miami Speedway. The No.9 Target Chip Ganassi Racing driver circled the 1.5-mile oval four times in one minute, 40.2341 seconds (213.341 m.p.h.).

In a rules change, qualifying now consists of four consecutively timed laps, with the lowest cumulative time being declared the pole winner.

The pole victory was the ninth of Dixon's IndyCar career.

"It's a great start to the season for Team Target," said Dixon.

Starting alongside the New Zealand native will be Ed Carpenter who posted a four-lap time of (1:40.2482) seconds. It is the best starting position of Carpenter's career.

"The whole team effort from top to bottom over the winter shows here," said Carpenter.

Carpenter's Vision Racing teammate A.J. Foyt IV (1:40.7676) and Andretti Green Racing's Danica Patrick (1:40.8066) will start in row two.

It's been an interesting off-season in American open-wheel racing. Every year it seemed that we would hear stories of unification of the CART and IndyCar Series, but this year it final came to pass. In February the two became one...well almost.

Following the first two events of the 2008 IndyCar season the drivers will split up with half racing in Motegi, Japan and half racing in Long Beach, CA. Both events will earn championship points.

But what the unification has done is make for a full IndyCar field for the first time in years.

Despite the defections of 2008 IndyCar Series champion Dario Franchitti and three-time series champion Sam Hornish Jr. to NASCAR, there is still plenty of talent left in the series.

Two-time Indy 500 winner Helio Castroneves is still racing here as are IndyCar Series champions Tony Kanaan, Dan Wheldon and Dixon. Kanaan earned a series- high five victories in 2007. There are veteran CART drivers Justin Wilson, Bruno Junqueira, Graham Rahal and Oriol Servia although four-time series champion Sebastien Bourdais found a ride in Formula One. Patrick is still here and desperately seeking the win that has eluded her. And of course there is still an Andretti (Marco) and a Foyt (IV) in the series.

"I'm confident that the last five years I've been in the championship hunt until the last race, so I'm not expecting any less," said Kanaan on the IndyCar website. "I'm fully aware that we're going to have more teams, more cars, more good teams, and the competition is probably going to get even higher."

Wheldon has won the season opener the last three years. But he crashed in turn 4 of his first qualifying lap as did Jay Howard and both will have to go to backup cars.

The race is set to drop the green flag on Saturday night at 8 p.m. (et).