IndyCar: Rosenqvist earns Pole for the Gallagher Grand Prix

Arrow McLaren SP’s Felix Rosenqvist turned a lap of  1m10.2265s to beat Alexander Rossi for the pole for the Gallagher GP IndyCar race Friday afternoon on the IMS road course.

This is the Swede’s second pole of 2022 and his third career pole in the IndyCar Series.

Andretti Autosport’s Alexander Rossi had a time of 1m10.5030s for the second starting position in his #27 Honda.

Pato O’Ward, Rosenqvist’s teammate, claimed the third starting spot with a time of 1m10.6092.

Will Power, Josef Newgarden, and Christian Lundgaard will start fourth, fifth and sixth.

“It’s been a pretty smooth day, surprisingly smooth, and I think those guys are kind of rare in INDYCAR. I think the whole team has just done a really good prep work for this race.”

“We tested here like a month ago, which I think really helped. We kind of got here with a good starting package, so we knew that this was going to be one that we had to really extract everything in qualifying.”

“But yeah, it was really cool. We did only one lap in Q1, saved those tires for the Fast Six, and everything just worked out to plan. Man, it’s rare to have those days, but I think today was just a day about execution, and now eyes forward to tomorrow.”

Alexander Rossi –                            Photo courtesy of IndyCar

“It’s great to be here during the GP. We’ve always historically struggled here,
especially in qualifying. Our race pace has been good in the past, and that’s never been an issue, but we’ve never been able to qualify here, so we had a really good test a month ago, and it’s nice to see that translate.”

“We had a really good test in Iowa, too. That didn’t really work out. It’s good. It’s good to be back obviously at the speedway. We all love coming here, and it’s great to be here on the triple-header weekend, and hopefully we can have a good day tomorrow.”

“That lap that Felix did, I don’t think we had anything for it, so hats off to him.”

“Yeah, it’s a great team result. Extremely happy with, first of all, making it to the Fast Six because when we started qualifying we were in trouble, just as we were in FP1. We turned — I don’t know how we did that, but we turned it around, and we got the car into a window where I could work with it, and yeah, like Alex said, I think Felix — I don’t think anybody had anything for Felix’s lap.”

“Great job to him. Super happy to see that for him. He deserves it. He’s been working really hard, and it’s a great result for the team.”

“The problem is for us at least in the past it’s always been your balance on blacks has to be pretty tough to drive for it to be decent on reds. It was extremely difficult to drive, like even worse than FP1 in the morning, so I was like, oh, we’re in trouble.”

“But they were like, man, we can’t change anything. I was like, you know what, I’m just going to try and pull something out of my hat to see if we can transfer, and when they told us we transferred, I was like, whew. Then we were able to make a longer change, which then put me in a way happier window for the second shot of qualifying and then that transferred us into the Fast Six.”

The three-round qualifying session was almost as notable for the drivers who will start the race from deep in the field as those who qualified up front.

Series points leader Marcus Ericsson will start last in the 25-car field in the No. 8 Huski Chocolate Chip Ganassi Racing Honda. He stopped on track with a mechanical problem on his warmup lap in the first session, never turning a flying lap.

Six-time series champion Scott Dixon, 34 points behind Ericsson in fourth, will start 20th in the No. 9 PNC Bank Chip Ganassi Racing Honda.

Qualifying Results

1. (7) Felix Rosenqvist, Chevrolet, 01:10.2265 (125.030)
2. (27) Alexander Rossi, Honda, 01:10.5030 (124.539)
3. (5) Pato O’Ward, Chevrolet, 01:10.6092 (124.352)
4. (12) Will Power, Chevrolet, 01:10.6224 (124.329)
5. (2) Josef Newgarden, Chevrolet, 01:10.6968 (124.198)
6. (30) Christian Lundgaard, Honda, 01:10.7280 (124.143)
7. (10) Alex Palou, Honda, 01:10.2074 (125.064)
8. (21) Rinus VeeKay, Chevrolet, 01:10.3100 (124.881)
9. (26) Colton Herta, Honda, 01:10.3532 (124.805)
10. (20) Conor Daly, Chevrolet, 01:10.5135 (124.521)
11. (18) David Malukas, Honda, 01:10.5636 (124.432)
12. (60) Simon Pagenaud, Honda, 01:10.7624 (124.083)
13. (45) Jack Harvey, Honda, 01:10.8564 (123.918)
14. (29) Devlin DeFrancesco, Honda, 01:10.7073 (124.180)
15. (3) Scott McLaughlin, Chevrolet, 01:10.9067 (123.830)
16. (06) Helio Castroneves, Honda, 01:10.7560 (124.094)
17. (15) Graham Rahal, Honda, 01:10.9093 (123.826)
18. (51) Takuma Sato, Honda, 01:10.8276 (123.969)
19. (77) Callum Ilott, Chevrolet, 01:11.1195 (123.460)
20. (9) Scott Dixon, Honda, 01:10.8938 (123.853)
21. (14) Kyle Kirkwood, Chevrolet, 01:11.2156 (123.293)
22. (28) Romain Grosjean, Honda, 01:11.0244 (123.625)
23. (48) Jimmie Johnson, Honda, 01:11.7710 (122.339)
24. (4) Dalton Kellett, Chevrolet, 01:12.0060 (121.940)
25. (8) Marcus Ericsson, Honda, No Time (No Speed)