MUÑOZ EARNS FIRST CAREER POLE AT TEXAS

Colombian Carloz Muñoz will have an unobstructed view of the green flag at Texas Motor Speedway tomorrow night as he will start from the pole position for the Firestone 600 – his first Verizon IndyCar Series career pole.  The 2014 Rookie of the Year sat on edge almost the entire qualifying session waiting to see if his average time would indeed remain the quickest in order for him to earn the pole position after being only the fifth car to qualify. Muñoz set the fast time in this afternoon’s qualifying session with a two-lap average time of 00:48.2460 on the 1.455-mile oval.

Teammate Alexander Rossi, who lost radio communication during his qualifying run, will line up ninth in the Castrol EDGE / Curb Honda. He will be followed by Ryan Hunter-Reay and Marco Andretti in 11th and 12th, respectively. All four Andretti Autosport Hondas placed inside the top 10 in this morning’s practice session.

Carlos Muñoz
No. 26 Andretti Autosport Honda

“It’s my first (IndyCar career) pole – I was looking at the (Verizon P1) hat and it looks really nice! I’m really happy for all of my team after Indy and for everything, I have to thank everyone. It’s a long race tomorrow and now we have to focus on that with practice tonight.”

Alexander Rossi
No. 98 Castrol EDGE / Curb Honda

“The car was so good – It’s really a shame to give away good positions because you don’t have a radio. We weren’t able to communicate with the timing stand to adjust the settings on the Castrol EDGE car, so missed out on where we feel we should be on the grid. But I’m looking forward to the race tomorrow and working on moving up through the field.”

Ryan Hunter-Reay
No. 28 DHL Honda

“It’s really hard to get the set up exactly as you need it. That’s the worst part about (Texas Motor Speedway), just getting the car in that very small operating range. Every year it seems to get trickier too. The track surface seems to be a little bit rougher every year and just eats up those Firestones more and more. We’ll see. We’re going to try and have a good night tonight in practice and get the DHL car set up for tomorrow.”

Marco Andretti
No. 27 Snapple Honda 

“We were hoping for a better starting positon for tomorrow’s race, especially being in Snapple’s hometown… But this is always a fun race here in Texas and we’ll work on picking a line that will take up to the front.”