Montreal native Alex Tagliani won the pole for tomorrow’s NAPA Auto Parts 200 NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal.
Tagliani, driving the No. 30 Oasis/Sennheiser Chevrolet, topped the speed charts with a lap of 96.688 miles per hour, thrilling the Canadian crowd, who delighted in seeing their hometown hero win his first pole in four career series starts.
Lining up next to Tagliani on Saturday will be Team Penske driver Sam Hornish Jr., who cranked off a lap of 96.649 mph in the No. 12 Dodge Challenger. His teammate, Jacques Villeneuve, was third at 96.633 mph.
Danica Patrick and Owen Kelly completed the top five.
The second five was Michael McDowell, Cole Whitt, Ron Fellows, Billy Johnson and Brian Scott.
On the 2.709-mile road course, the qualifying was done in groups, from slowest to fastest in practice. The first four groups were six cars each, with the remaining four groups five cars per group.
With 21 of 33 NNS races in the books for the 2012 season, Elliott Sadler comes into the Canada road race with a lead of 13 points over defending series champion Ricky Stenhouse Jr. Sam Hornish Jr. (-24) is third, followed by Austin Dillon (-29) and Michael Annett (-74).
Sadler qualified 17th, one position behind Stenhouse.
Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEED.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100.
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