The first group of drivers was thoroughly compromised by Carlos Munoz crunching into the wall exiting Turn 2, leaving only time for a one lap sprint at the end of the session.

Andretti Autosport-Honda's Ryan Hunter-Reay seized the opportunity to grab top spot, two-tenths of a second ahead of Penske-Chevrolet’s Helio Castroneves.

But inevitably the second session, uninterrupted, was much faster and Sato was 0.14sec clear of yesterday’s dominant winner Graham Rahal. The Indy 500 winner also set a new qualifying track record of 1min13.6732sec.

Rahal will thus line up third, alongside Castroneves, as per yesterday albeit a row further back. Fifth will again be occupied by James Hinchcliffe who spun on Lap 1 yesterday but stormed back to finish third. Mikhail Aleshin will make that third row an all-Schmidt Peterson Motorsports affair.

Penske’s Will Power set some extraordinary sub-74sec lap times on blacks at the start of Group 2’s session. However, a switch onto reds was left too late and he skated down an escape road, and he’ll thus line up seventh, alongside Chip Ganassi Racing-Honda’s Scott Dixon.

Marco Andretti made it three Andretti cars in the top 10, while Conor Daly brought some smiles to AJ Foyt Racing after Munoz’s faux-pas by nailing 10th spot.

Qualifying results:

Pos.	#	Driver	Team	Time	Gap
1	26	Takuma Sato	Andretti Autosport	1'13.6732
2	28	Ryan Hunter-Reay	Andretti Autosport	1'15.2833	1.6101
3	15	Graham Rahal	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	1'13.8105	0.1373
4	3	Helio Castroneves	Team Penske	1'15.5279	1.8547
5	5	James Hinchcliffe	Schmidt Peterson Motorsports	1'13.8264	0.1532
6	7	Mikhail Aleshin	Schmidt Peterson Motorsports	1'16.0371	2.3639
7	12	Will Power	Team Penske	1'13.9449	0.2717
8	9	Scott Dixon	Chip Ganassi Racing	1'16.1727	2.4995
9	27	Marco Andretti	Andretti Autosport	1'14.0339	0.3607
10	4	Conor Daly	A. J. Foyt Enterprises	1'16.1732	2.5000
11	1	Simon Pagenaud	Team Penske	1'14.0765	0.4033
12	83	Charlie Kimball	Chip Ganassi Racing	1'16.1800	2.5068
13	2	Josef Newgarden	Team Penske	1'14.1814	0.5082
14	98	Alexander Rossi	Andretti Autosport	1'16.2884	2.6152
15	10	Tony Kanaan	Chip Ganassi Racing	1'14.3287	0.6555
16	8	Max Chilton	Chip Ganassi Racing	1'16.5150	2.8418
17	19	Ed Jones	Dale Coyne Racing	1'14.7786	1.1054
18	21	J.R. Hildebrand	Ed Carpenter Racing	1'18.6272	4.9540
19	18	Esteban Gutierrez	Dale Coyne Racing	1'15.0055	1.3323
20	16	Oriol Servia	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	1'21.4485	7.7753
21	20	Spencer Pigot	Ed Carpenter Racing	1'15.8491	2.1759
22	14	Carlos Munoz	A. J. Foyt Enterprises	no time	-