Briscoe on pole for IRL

Scott Dixon came into the weekend insisting it wasn’t going to be easy to make it four straight IndyCar victories at Watkins Glen International.

Looks as if he was right.

Ryan Briscoe gave Team Penske its fourth straight pole on the 3.4-mile, 11-turn circuit in upstate New York, supplanting veteran teammate Helio Castroneves. The Brazilian’s string of three in a row was ended by a broken throttle cable that sent him to the rear of the 26-car field for today’s race.

Justin Wilson, one of the nine drivers transitioning from the defunct Champ Car World Series to the newly unified IRL IndyCar Series, will start second, followed by Ryan Hunter-Reay.

Wilson appeared to have his first IndyCar pole wrapped up when he pitted after turning a lap of 1 minute, 29.38 seconds. But, as the Englishman sat in his car on pit road for the final moments of qualifying, Briscoe lapped the track at 1:29.34 to grab his second series pole and the 36th for Team Penske.

“The guys told me what Justin’s lap was and I knew I had a chance with one lap left,” the Australian driver said. “I was pushing hard and I pretty much had to slow it down a bit to go faster. I had been overdriving it a bit.”

If Dixon is going to set an IndyCar record of four straight wins on the same track this weekend, the Chip Ganassi Racing driver is going to have to do it from fourth place.

F1: British Grand Prix

Heikki Kovalainen captured his first Formula One pole and will try for his first victory in the series in the British Grand Prix at Silverston, England.

The McLaren driver crossed the line more than half a second faster than Red Bull’s Mark Webber, who also will seek his first win in today’s race, after the bigger contenders struggled to handle the breezy and wet conditions.

World champion Kimi Raikkonen, last year’s British GP winner, was third fastest in his Ferrari ahead of home favorite Lewis Hamilton of McLaren, whose bid to take the pole was hampered when he skidded off the circuit at a left-hand bend.

Felipe Massa, who leads the series standings by two points for Ferrari, labored to ninth place in the grid despite posting the fastest practice time Friday. His best effort in the third round of qualifying was more than 21/4 seconds slower than Kovalainen.