Chaves handed St. Pete Indy Lights pole

Gabby Chaves has been awarded pole position for this weekend's Indy Lights season opener at St. Petersburg after qualifying was canceled due to bad weather.

Storms rolled through the St Petersburg area just as the qualifying was scheduled to start, and rain continued for the next two hours.

Racer officials managed to reschedule most of the day's other affected sessions, including IndyCar qualifying, which is set to start at 5 p.m. ET, However, time limitations mean that the Lights grid will be determined by combined practice times.

Consequently, Chaves will be joined on the front row by Andretti Autosport's Zach Veach, who was 0.25sec shy of Chaves' 1m08.4529s benchmark.

Veach's teammate Matthew Brabham will make his series debut from third, alongside fellow rookie and AutoGP champion Vittorio Ghirelli.

Among the other notable debutants, 2012 British F3 champion Jack Harvey will start from sixth on the grid, one place ahead of former Virgin and Team Lotus F1 test driver Luiz Razia.