LONG BEACH GRAND PRIX : Qualifying : Sullivan Gets Pole Position

Danny Sullivan found a clear stretch of race track for 1 minute 6.607 seconds Saturday afternoon and in that short span of time wrested the pole position from Mario Andretti for today’s Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach.

Andretti, winner of the Long Beach pole in three of the past four Indy car races, had one last chance to get No. 4 but as he came up on the final hairpin turn leading to the start-finish line, he found Scott Pruett in the turn. In the blink of an eye that it took Andretti to get around Pruett, he had lost a tenth of a second and the pole.

Sullivan turned a lap around the 11-turn, 1.67-mile seaside circuit at 90.261 m.p.h. to win his second pole for the Long Beach race. He was also on the pole in 1986 with a speed of 90.318 m.p.h.

Andretti’s best was 90.113, good enough to put him on the front row alongside Sullivan when the race is flagged off at 1 p.m.

“It sounds like a bad excuse, but I got caught up in traffic twice,” Andretti said.

Sullivan was driving a Chevrolet-powered Penske PC-17, the stablemate of the car Rick Mears drove to win the pole last week in the Checker 200 in Phoenix--a race that Andretti won in a Chevrolet-powered Lola.

It was Sullivan’s sixth career pole in Indy cars and his first since Cleveland in 1986, which was also his last win.

All but five of the 26 cars bettered their times from Friday on a cool, cloudy day ideal for qualifying. Twenty-six will start the 95-lap, 158.65-mile race, 24 from qualifications and Dominic Dobson and Dick Ferguson by promoter’s option.