AVONDALE, Ariz. -- Helio Castroneves gave team owner Roger Penske his first Indy Racing League pole Saturday, taking the top spot for the Copper World 200 at Phoenix International Raceway.

"This is a very happy moment for Marlboro Team Penske," said Castroneves, nicknamed "Spiderman" for his wall-climbing antics following victories on the rival CART series and at last year's IRL crown jewel, the Indianapolis 500.

	Helio Castroneves was a fraction faster than Sam Hornish Jr. on Saturday.

Castroneves' fast lap was 179.888 mph while defending IRL champion Sam Hornish Jr. was a split-second slower at 179.735. That gave Castroneves his eighth career pole and third on an oval track. It's the 136th open-wheel pole for the elite Penske team.

The results Saturday reversed the order of the front row two weeks ago at the season-opening race in Homestead, Fla.

Hornish went on to win that race while Penske driver Gil de Ferran started sixth and finished second, just ahead of teammate and Brazilian countryman Castroneves.

"Whether you start first or 10th, it doesn't matter much," Castroneves said. "If you have a car that can pass in traffic, you can win from anywhere in the field."

The Penske team, whose only previous IRL events were the Phoenix race -- as a warmup for Indy -- and last year's 500, left CART at the end of 2001 to concentrate on the Indy-car series.

"I'm much happier than last year," Castroneves said. "Last year, I started 17th.

"Last year, this was one of my best oval races. I was able to pass and even ended up in the lead for a while," he added. "We were happy, even finishing 18th."

That won't satisfy him or Penske on Sunday.

"Now, we're not just thinking about going fast," the driver said. "We need to collect points because we're part of the championship now."

Hornish goes into Sunday's 200-mile event on the mile oval with a two-race winning string, including the 2001 season-finale in Texas. He also has 10 top-10 finishes in a row, a series record.

He missed his second straight pole by 0.017 seconds.

"The car was good, but I had to lift a little going into turn one," Hornish said. "It's just one of those things. I thought, 'I can't believe I did that."

Jeff Ward, making his second start for Chip Ganassi's new IRL team, was third at 178.602, followed by last year's top rookie Filipe Giaffone at 178.083, hot new rookie Tomas Scheckter at 177.971, Robbie Buhl at 177.858 and de Ferran, the CART champion the past two years and fastest in practice on this track, at 177.672.

"I'm not exactly sure what happened," de Ferran said. "The car was good, we just didn't have the speed we had earlier in the day."

Rounding out the top 10 in the 25-car lineup were local favorite Billy Boat at 176.523, 2001 series runner-up Buddy Lazier at 176.169 and Eliseo Salazar at 175.539.

Eddie Cheever Jr., who also owns the car driven by Scheckter, was 16th, ending a series-leading string of top-10 starts he had shared with Hornish at 10.