Dario Franchitti, Sebasten Bourdais on front row for standing start Toronto Indy

Dario Franchitti scored his third pole of the season on Friday afternoon at Exhibition Place in Toronto, where he will share the front row with Sebastien Bourdias in Race No. 1 of the Honda Indy Toronto doubleheader.

The 85-lap race on the 1.7-mile, 11 turn street course will pay full points but will also feature the first standing start in the history of IZOD IndyCar Series.

“It feels good to get our third pole of the year,” said Franchitti, who moved into a tie with Michael Andretti for sixth on the all-time Indy car list (32) by recording a lap of 59.6756 seconds in the No. 10 Target Chip Ganassi Racing car in the Firestone Fast Six. “I made it difficult this morning. I made a mistake in Turn 5, took the right side off the car. The guys had to work and repair the car.

“But the Target car was good on Firestone blacks, Firestone reds. I was able to keep finding a little bit every lap. Even the second runner-up on tires in Q3, I was able to push a little bit more. Felt really good about that.”

The biggest surprise of time trials has to be the runner-up quaifying position for Bourdias, who picked up his first career IndyCar Series front row starting spot in the No. 7 Dragon Racing Chevrolet.

The transition to the IndyCar Series hasn’t gone smoothly for the four-time CART Series champion but now Bourdais believes his team has hit on something.

“We finally got a break and the car is heading in the right direction,” Bourdais said. “We made a lot of changes this morning in the (90-minute practice session). 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.”

Standing starts were the norm for CART, which could make for a career-best IndyCar Series result for Bourdais, who has 31 career victories and 31 poles but hasn’t matched that success in two full IICS seasons.

Will Power, Tony Kanaan and James Jakes completed the top-five.

Race No. 1 will utilize a staning start and is set to begin at 3 p.m. ET and will be televized on the NBC Sports Network. Race No. 2 will utilize a standard rolling start and will air at 3 p.m. on Sundat. The same format will be used for the twin races on the Streets of Houston in early October.

The complete qualifying results have been provided below: