Pagenaud: “Qualifying is all about ego”

Although the defending champion lies third in the championship, he hadn’t set a pole position this year heading into the Toronto weekend.

But with a sub-59sec lap around the 1.786-mile Canadian street course, he outqualified teammates Helio Castroneves and Will Power by over half a second, and will be joined on the front row by his former Formula Atlantic rival Graham Rahal.

Pagenaud said: "It feels so rewarding when you feel like you extract the best out of yourself and feel one with the car. Very satisfying, but my race car has been phenomenal this weekend, so I hope we can transform that into a win tomorrow. It would be perfect timing in the championship.

“For me, race results [is] really what pays. But every racecar driver has an ego, and I think qualifying is all about ego: we all want to be the fastest man.

“I think from the moment we start in go-karts, when you manage to do that special lap, it's the best feeling in the world.”

The Penske driver, for whom this was the tenth pole position of his Indy car career, said Toronto was a particularly vital place to earn top spot.

“To me it's the most important place to qualify well, so that's why this pole position is very important to the race results," said Pagenaud. "It's going to count toward it… Toronto always has a twist for you on the strategy, but it's always better to be up front, for sure.

"So that's mission accomplished on the pole position, but we have one more thing to do, and that's the race.

"The whole weekend is tackling practice 1 a certain way to be well set up for practice 2, and practice 3 is all about qualifying. When you check everything that you want to check to that point, that's satisfying.

“Now we've got to forget about pace over one lap, right. We've been thinking one lap pace. I've got to extract the best out of the tires, the car. I've got to be as close as possible to the wall. I'll tell you, I took all the risk necessary in Turn 11, for example, to get a little tense here and there.

“If I do that in the race, I won't finish the race. So it's a different approach. I've got to set up my car a little differently for the race, maybe a little less aggressive with the rear end of the car to actually keep my tires underneath me and be stronger the whole stint.

“Tomorrow we need to go out there and win the race. That's the bottom line.”