Sato takes Pocono pole in crash-filled session

Minutes after teammate Ryan Hunter-Reay hit the wall in Turn 3, final qualifier Takuma Sato won the pole for Sunday's 500-mile Verizon IndyCar Series race at Pocono. The qualifying session and preceding practice were marred by several crashes by a rookie and veterans alike.

Sato's two-lap average of 219.639mph knocked Simon Pagenaud (+0.244s) off the provisional pole. The Ganassis of Charlie Kimball and Tony Kanaan will start third and fourth, and last year's race winner Will Power will start fifth.

“I was a little bit worried about Ryan,” said Sato, who earned his seventh series pole. “But I had a good feeling and on the warm-up lap, and then I couldn’t believe it, obviously the engineers and guys did a fantastic job. What an incredible achievement for Andretti Autosport.

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Hunter-Reay's Andretti Autosport Honda wiggled at the end of his warm-up lap before pancaking the outer wall in Turn 3 and sliding toward another collision with the inner wall, a crash similar to Ed Carpenter's crash in the morning practice session. Hunter-Reay was helped out of the car and to the ambulance after complaining of hip pain. He was evaluated by INDYCAR Medical Director Dr. Geoffrey Billows and will be transported by ground to Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest for further evaluation.

Helio Castroneves, who was seventh to qualify, spun toward the outside wall going into Turn 1 and hit hard on the driver's side, lifting the right side of the car up before coming back down. He was checked and released from the infield care center.

"We didn't have a chance to run [a qualifying sim]," Castroneves told NBC Sports. "Probably when I went out it was a little slow, the car tends to push a little bit and I made some adjustments in the car, and it might be a little too aggressive, and it caught me right in the middle of Turn 1.

"But I'm not [worried] about where you start; the good news it's 500 miles. Last year [Ryan] Hunter-Reay actually started last – probably where I'm going to start – and nearly won the race. It shows that if you have good balance, which we do, have a good team and everything so we should be able to overcome this obstacle. That's what I'm looking for."

Carpenter's ECR team took two hours to replace the left side and the gearbox, but they missed qualifying tech by six minutes and he'll start 20th. Rookie Ed Jones, who spun in Turn 2 during practice, rebounded to qualify 11th.

Two drivers not in the series for the last race had solid runs. Gabby Chaves qualified eighth for Harding Racing, and Sebastian Saavedra, who is driving the Schmidt Peterson Motorsports No. 7 Honda for the next two races, will start 15th in his first start since Toronto last month. It was announced last week that SPM and Mikhail Aleshin were parting ways, with the Russian focusing the rest of his year on helping sponsor SMP Racing develop a new LMP1-L chassis for 2018.