Dario Franchitti secured pole position for Saturday’s first race in the IZOD IndyCar Series double-header on the streets of Toronto.

Franchitti went to the top with a best lap of 59.5756 seconds, which proved to be just good enough to see off a late flyer from Sebastien Bourdais’ Dragon car. The Frenchman already had second locked down, albeit 0.4 second off Franchitti’s lap. He found a lot of time on his final lap, but ended up falling just 0.09sec short.

“I was surprised how quick we could go on the blacks without doing a really good lap,” said Ganassi driver Franchitti, who had brushed the wall in practice earlier in the day. “It feels good, especially after crashing this morning the guys had to rebuild the right side of the car.”

Bourdais took solace in his Dragon team’s strongest showing in qualifying this season.

“We finally got a break and the car is heading in the right direction,” said the four-time CART champion who has never started worse than seventh in ninth starts in Toronto (he won in ’04). “We made a lot of changes this morning. I’m pretty hopeful. We’re starting to understand what this car needs on the new tires, which is something we haven’t had since the start of the season.”

Will Power used his final lap to leap up to third, and said that that was all the speed he could get out of his Penske Dallara-Chevrolet.

“I was definitely pushing hard,” he said. “I don’t know how Dario and Bourdais do those lap times, but it is definitely impressive.”

Tony Kanaan will start from fourth, while Jakes Jakes set the fifth-fastest time but faces a 10-place grid penalty for an engine change. Scott Dixon completed the top six.

The main point of interest during the earlier elimination stages came when Takuma Sato hit the wall at Turn 1 toward the end of the second round, bringing out the red flag with just under a minute left and costing several drivers their final lap. Among those affected was reigning champion Ryan Hunter-Reay, who was taken out of last weekend’s Pocono race by the Japanese driver in a pitlane accident.

“I’d like to thank the crew for giving me a great car and I’d like to thank Sato for knocking us out again today,” he said.

Pos  Driver               Team/Engine      Time        Gap 1.  Dario Franchitti     Ganassi/Honda    59.6756s 2.  Sebastien Bourdais   Dragon/Chevy     59.7701s    +0.0945s 3.  Will Power           Penske/Chevy     1m00.0612s  +0.3856s 4.  Tony Kanaan          KV/Chevy         1m00.1179s  +0.4423s 5.  James Jakes          Rahal/Honda      1m00.1430s  +0.4674s 6.  Scott Dixon          Ganassi/Honda    1m00.3228s  +0.6472s 7.  Ryan Hunter-Reay     Andretti/Chevy   1m00.1954s  Round 2 8.  Helio Castroneves    Penske/Chevy     1m00.2866s  Round 2 9.  Justin Wilson        Coyne/Honda      1m00.2954s  Round 210.  Ryan Briscoe         Panther/Chevy    1m00.3843s  Round 211.  Marco Andretti       Andretti/Chevy   1m00.6027s  Round 212.  Takuma Sato          Foyt/Honda       1m02.3831s  Round 213.  Simon Pagenaud       Schmidt/Honda    1m00.4303s  Group 114.  James Hinchcliffe    Andretti/Chevy   1m00.5083s  Group 215.  EJ Viso              Andretti/Chevy   1m00.4556s  Group 116.  Charlie Kimball      Ganassi/Honda    1m00.6569s  Group 217.  Alex Tagliani        Herta/Honda      1m00.4586s  Group 118.  Graham Rahal         Rahal/Honda      1m00.6868s  Group 219.  Josef Newgarden      Fisher/Honda     1m00.5822s  Group 120.  Mike Conway          Coyne/Honda      1m00.9526s  Group 221.  Tristan Vautier      Schmidt/Honda    1m00.9053s  Group 122.  Simona de Silvestro  KV/Chevy         1m01.1553s  Group 223.  Ed Carpenter         Carpenter/Chevy  1m01.2367s  Group 124.  Sebastian Saavedra   Dragon/Chevy     1m01.2939s  Group 2