Will Power made a perfect start to this weekend’s IndyCar event in Sonoma by topping the timesheets in Friday’s practice run.

The Australian, a winner at the California circuit in the past two years, clocked a best lap of one minute and 18.6887 seconds in the session to finish ahead of teammate Ryan Briscoe (1:18.8782) and Simon Pagenaud (1:18.9228).

Power’s main championship rival, American Ryan Hunter-Reay, was well back in 20th position and looks to have plenty of work to do if he’s to get up to the front before Sunday’s (Monday 0630 AEST) race.

“It was good to start the weekend out in P1,” said Power, who holds a narrow five-point lead in the championship from Hunter-Reay.

“It will be very important to start up front in the race if you want to finish on the podium.

“We’ve had success here in the past – we took the top three spots in the race last year and one-two today so Team Penske definitely has had good success here in the part.

“We’d really like a pole position to keep moving forward in the championship race and we’ll see if we can do that tomorrow.”

Hunter-Reay admitted he is a long way off challenging Power and his Penske teammates and will need to improve if he’s to keep his championship challenge on track.

“This is definitely a Penske track. Last year it was one-two-three,” he said.

“For the past four or five years, this has been a notoriously difficult event for the Andretti squad.

“It is tough. Right now we definitely have to close the gap. They are the team to beat. We aren’t stellar at the moment.”