IndyCar News: O’Ward Takes Pole from Malukas for the Borchetta Bourbon Music City Grand Prix

Pato O’Ward grabbed the pole away from AJ Foyt Racing’s David Malukas for tomorrow’s Borchetta Bourbon Music City Grand Prix at the Nashville Superspeedway.  O’Ward’s lap of 202.621 mph topped Malukas’ lap of 201.992 mph.

Happy with his achievement of winning his seventh career pole, the young Mexican commented that he had never won a race from the pole.

“The car was great,” O’Ward said. “Felt really comfortable in practice and didn’t give me any scares or anything. I was happy with that. Very good.”

” I’ve got a big one on the list this weekend. I’ve never won from pole ever, ever, ever. I’m determined to make it happen this weekend. Step one done, and I’m super happy with my car. I was very comfortable with it in qualifying — in practice and qualifying.”

” It’s been a successful year. I know in racing it’s either you win or bust, you know, but I think there’s a lot of value in seeing the growth that I have had this year, that the team has had this year.”

“Ultimately, it seemed like there was two championships going on, and it was Alex Palou with himself and us, the rest of the field. I think there are many ways to see how it went, but I think all in all it’s been successful.”

“My goal going into this year was actually completing every single lap of the year. I didn’t really have a win objective.  I just wanted to finish every single lap. Sadly, that dream was crushed in Portland, but apart from that, at least from my side, I’ve been on that objective, and I’m proud of I’ve been able to accomplish it, at least up until this point in the season.”

Malukas was not thinking he could retain the pole before the last ten cars hit the track.  Learning from Milwaukee, where he was on top until the very end, the American was not holding his breath this weekend.

“I am definitely disappointed. The guys just did a fantastic job. When it comes to Nashville here at the superspeedway, everybody is generally pretty much flat, right? It comes down to the guys in setup, and these guys just built a beautiful car.’

“I went out there and was, like, It’s going to be hard to beat, it was a perfect car. Just driving a beauty. It brought me home. That was sweet. Very easy going 200 miles. Can you imagine saying that? That was a piece of cake going 200 miles an hour. That’s because of the guys, the Foyt team. They did such a good job.”

“When you look  at the whole season as a whole from month of May onwards, we made big steps in qualifying. That’s from ovals, street courses, road courses. We really, really made some big gains. ”

O’Ward’s teammate, Christian Lundgaard, will start third after posting a lap of 201.713 mph.

Chip Ganassi Racing’s Alex Palou will start fourth tomorrow with a lap of 201.603 mph.

Palou’s teammate, Scott Dixon, will round out the top five with a lap of 201.437 mph.

Indy NXT – De Alba Continues Oval Momentum with Nashville Pole 

The good times kept rolling for Salvador de Alba as he was the fastest qualifier Saturday for the INDY NXT by Firestone Music City Grand Prix at Nashville Superspeedway, his first career pole in the INDYCAR development series.

De Alba was fastest with a two-lap average speed of 184.471 mph in the No. 27 Grupo Indi car fielded by Andretti Global. His first career pole, which comes in his 28th career start in the series, came less than a week after he earned his first series victory last Sunday at the Milwaukee Mile.

SEE: Qualifying Results

“It took a while, but it’s great timing to have all these achievements, first career pole, first win last weekend,” de Alba said. “We have one more day to keep doing it. I have a race tomorrow, and I want to win as badly as when I first started doing this. Really happy to be here now and pushing forward for tomorrow.”

Qualifying Results

Lucille Dust reporting live from Nashville