Dixon

KANSAS CITY, Kan. -- Scott Dixon won the pole for the Kansas Indy 300 on Saturday and Tomas Scheckter was second, giving Chip Ganassi Racing both front-row spots for the race.

Points leader Tony Kanaan, whose advantage over the second-place Dixon has dwindled to 27 points, will start in the fourth row for Sunday's race on the 1½-mile tri-oval.

Dixon's qualifying lap of 218.08 mph gave him his second straight pole and third of the season. His win continued a hot streak that includes two straight victories and a string of 287 consecutive laps led.

He has not been out of the lead since the 141st lap at Pikes Peak on June 15 and last week led all 206 laps of a rain-shortened race at Richmond. That set an IRL record for most consecutive laps led in one race.

"Richmond was going to be a hard circuit to pass," said Dixon, who leads the IRL with three victories in his first season after moving over from CART. "We just had a fast car up front. It's going to be a lot different tomorrow."

Scheckter, who won the pole here a year ago as a rookie racing for Eddie Cheever, turned in a fast lap of 217.89 mph. On Friday, he went over 218 mph and was the day's fastest driver in practice.

"This surprises me a little bit," Dixon said. "I really thought (the polesitter) was going to be Tomas, because he's been fast all weekend."

The two planned to meet Saturday night to plan early-race strategy, Scheckter said.

"It is a long race," Scheckter said. "It does not matter who goes into Turn 1 first. Hopefully we can just get in line and start conserving fuel and hope we have good stops."

Dixon agreed.

"We both want to finish well in the race, so we're going to conserve the cars," he said. "I'm not going to do anything drastic and I'm sure Tomas is the same way. That's something Chip has drilled into us. We'll be pretty steady and see how the day plays out."

Tora Takagi and Indianapolis 500 winner Gil de Ferran will start on the second row, with Felipe Giaffone fifth _ after switching to the car he drove last week at Richmond _ and Helio Castroneves sixth.

"We took a huge gamble, and it paid off for us big-time," said Giaffone, who finished sixth at Richmond. "We weren't satisfied with how our primary car for the weekend was working, so we thought about all of our options and decided it might be worth a try to switch to the backup car."

Al Unser Jr. will start on the inside of the third row -- with Toyota engines taking the top seven spots -- with Kanaan's Honda-powered car starting eighth.

Greg Ray and Scott Sharp round out the top 10.

"We made some changes after practice yesterday, and I think we went a little backward," said Kanaan, whose qualifying speed of 215.58 mph was more than 2 mph slower than his fastest practice lap Friday. "I still have a good car, and I'm going to be strong in the race."