Alex Tagliani has qualified on pole for Sunday’s 95th Indianapolis 500. The Canadian narrowly beat 2008 Indy winner Scott Dixon to the top slot, averaging 227.472mph. The 38-year-old has been racing Indy-type cars for 11 years and started his own team, FAZZT Racing, in 2009. Tagliani sold the team in March to Sam Schmidt, a former driver who is running three cars in this year’s 500. Focusing on driving this year, Tagliani set the pace in last week’s rain-shortened practice at Indianapolis before taking pole on Saturday.

A Quebec native, Tagliani raced Formula Atlantics for three years before graduating to CART in 2000 with Jerry Forsythe’s Player’s team. He joined Paul Gentilozzi’s Rocketsports team in ’03, before scoring his first and only Champ Car victory at Elkhart Lake the following season. He drove for Derrick Walker’s Team Australia in 2005-06 before rejoining Rocketsports in ’07 and then racing stock cars in Canada in ‘08. The following year Tagliani ran a half season in the IRL before starting his own team.

A pair of Brits, Rob Edwards and Allan McDonald, runs Schmidt’s team. Team manager Edwards worked for Walker for many years while chief engineer McDonald most recently worked for Michael Andretti’s team. “I’m really thankful for the amount of work this crew has put in,” said Tagliani. “I’m going to pinch myself tonight. It’s a team effort, good sponsorship and an amazing crew that believes in the team and me. I’m really happy for Sam. He deserves it. He’s a great leader and hopefully there’s more results like this to come.”

Both Dixon and Dario Franchitti in Chip Ganassi’s cars ran out of fuel on their four-lap qualifying runs. Dixon hit trouble coming off Turn 4 on his last lap but was able to qualify second. “It’s frustrating,” he said. “I think it would have been damn close. But the car’s strong and hopefully we can have a clean day next weekend and maybe get another Borg-Warner Trophy.”

Franchitti looked like challenging Tagliani for pole but ran out of fuel going into his fourth and last qualifying lap. The Scot will start the 500 from ninth place. “The car was quite good and we were looking good,” he said. “I could see more rpm and speed coming out of Turn 2 and the balance was getting better, but it just ran out starting the last lap. It bobbled a bit before the yard of bricks and then it went completely going into Turn 1. Even the best team in the business make mistakes sometimes.”

Oriol Servia did an excellent job to qualify on the outside of the front row in Newman/Haas Racing’s lead car. Championship leader Will Power qualified in the middle of row two between Townsend Bell and 2005 Indy winner Dan Wheldon. Power’s Penske team-mates Hélio Castroneves and Ryan Briscoe both qualified poorly. Three-time winner Castroneves will start from 16th on the grid and Briscoe in 27th. This is the first time since 2004 that Penske has not had a car on the front row.

In even more trouble was Michael Andretti’s team. Michael’s cousin John was the team’s best qualifier among its five entries, in 17th, while Long Beach winner Mike Conway and Ryan Hunter-Reay failed to make the field. Hunter-Reay was bumped at the last moment by team-mate Marco Andretti.