KANSAS CITY - The Rahal Letterman Racing IndyCar Series team saved its best for last in today’s qualifying session at Kansas Speedway, running their best laps of the day when it counted in sealing starting spots for Sunday’s Kansas Lottery Indy 300.

Scott Sharp (#8 Patron Dallara/Honda/Firestone) will grid 14th in tomorrow’s 200-lap event after posting a best time of 25.8816 seconds/211.424 mph around the 1.5-mile oval while teammate Jeff Simmons (#17 Ethanol Dallara/Honda/Firestone) earned the 16th spot in the 21-car field with a time of 25.9344 seconds/210.994 mph.

“I'm a big fan of running my best lap in qualifying instead of practice, so that was a good setup for us. I think we'll have a good day tomorrow. We ran a lot of full-tank laps in practice and worked on having a good car in the draft, and that's what counts here because we'll be in traffic all day tomorrow, so being good in the draft will be the key to doing well."

Simmons came back after losing a little time in the morning practice due to a mechanical issue, but answered the bell when it counted as with just two laps to post a time the Team Ethanol car ran its first sub-26 second laps of the weekend.

"We got as much out of the car in qualifying as we did in practice, so that's a good sign for us. It wasn't a bad day for us. We tend to have better race cars than we do in qualifying so we are thinking positive and we think that we could end up with a top-five finish tomorrow if things play out right.”

Sharp will make his seventh Kansas Speedway start tomorrow, matching Sam Hornish Jr. as the only IndyCar drivers to make all seven ICS starts at the 1.5-mile oval. The all-time leader in IndyCar starts, Sharp will make his 133rd career start and 125th consecutive, both IndyCar records.

Simmons will make his third Kansas start and his starting position of 16th in the best of his three Kansas runs.

The Kansas Lottery Indy 300 will be seen live on ESPN2 at 4:30 pm Eastern on Sunday afternoon.