Graham Rahal snatched his first pole position in six years at the last possible moment from his team-mate Christian Lundgaard at the Indianapolis road course, while there were big championship implications for Alex Palou and Josef Newgarden.
Rahal – who was beaten to pole by less than a tenth at Mid-Ohio earlier this year – has had all sorts of misfortune at Indy.
A wheel came off after a pitstop when he was well positioned to fight for the win in 2021, and then he was bumped out of the 500 totally by his team-mate Jack Harvey earlier this year.
It was an emotional rollercoaster for the team that won the 500 in 2020, and Rahal was left in tears having failed to make that event.
Fast forward to this year’s road course race and he was fastest in practice and then in Q2, despite complaining of a long brake pedal and some understeer.
With the last remaining lap, he snatched the pole from Lundgaard – who himself was on pole at this track earlier this year – by just 0.1154s. It means the Rahal Letterman Lanigan team have scored pole at both Indy road course races.
His last pole came at Detroit in 2017. “It isn’t a win, but it feels like it,” he said.
It means Honda scored its 10th pole of the season out of 14 races, too, ending a run of three straight Chevy poles.
Behind Lundgaard, Alexander Rossi equalled his best qualifying of the season in his first year at Arrow McLaren, ahead of team-mate Pato O’Ward.
Devlin DeFrancesco was arguably the star of the day with his first Fast Six performance in his two-year IndyCar career for Andretti, beating team-mate Romain Grosjean to fifth.
Outside of the pole battle, all eyes were on the implications of the title fight, with four races remaining in the series.
Palou – who only needs to finish ninth in each of the remaining four races to win the title currently holding an 84-point lead – qualified in ninth and will start eighth because of a penalty for another driver while Newgarden starts 19th after a disaster session.
Palou was two tenths off making the pole shootout Fast Six, a feat he did manage in the May race at this track qualifying third, and then won.
Neither of Palou or Newgarden’s team-mates made the pole shootout meaning Ganassi and Penske were absent from the pole battle.
Newgarden was struggling with his car in practice and followed that up in qualifying where he was just behind team-mate Will Power, who starts 17th.
A visibly frustrated @josefnewgarden after failing to advance to Round 2 of qualifying.
📺: @peacock #INDYCAR // #GallagherGP pic.twitter.com/utdzzfnPES
— NTT INDYCAR SERIES (@IndyCar) August 11, 2023
Newgarden smashed the pitbox with his hand and looked disconsolate. If there’s any positive, it’s that he saved a set of soft tyres he will be able to use in the race by not making it through.
Further forward, and outside of the top six, rookie Marcus Armstrong qualified 0.0008s off making it through to the pole shootout in an incredible margin at the first track he visits for the second time.
It’s still the Kiwi’s best IndyCar qualifying run as he continues to get better and better through the season.
Jack Harvey was the worst qualifying Rahal car in eighth – still his second-best qualifying of the year – ahead of Palou and the lowest McLaren, of Felix Rosenqvist.
Scott McLaughlin and Helio Castroneves were the last cars in the top 12.
Castroneves was guaranteed of his best road and street course qualifying since Laguna Seca in 2022 after he made it out of the first group, on the day it was announced he would scale back to an Indy 500-only Meyer Shank car next season with Tom Blomqvist taking a full-time ride at the team.
However, a six-place grid penalty for taking an extra engine for this weekend than the four allowed across a season earned a penalty, bumping him back to 18th.
Grid alterations with penalties applied
7 Armstrong 8 Palou 9 Rosenqvist 10 McLaughlin 11 Herta 12 Lundqvist 13 Kirkwood 14 Harvey 15 Dixon 16 Power 17 Ericsson 18 Castroneves
19 Newgarden
Ace rookie Linus Lundqvist dazzled on his Nashville debut for Meyer Shank last week when he made it to Q2 and qualified 11th, and missed out on advancing from Group 1 by 0.0873s as he’ll start 12th as the first driver not to make it through, boosted two spots by the other penalties.
Lundqvist’s only misdemeanour was stopping in Lundgaard’s pit box!
Perhaps surprisingly, Andretti’s pairing of Colton Herta and last week’s Nashville winner Kyle Kirkwood will start in 11th and 13th respectively.
They will jump to 11th and 13th with Harvey and Castroneves’ penalties.
Ganassi suffered from having all four cars in the same group in Q1, so Scott Dixon (16th) and Marcus Ericsson (18th) failed to make it through. They each jump up a spot with the Harvey and Castroneves penalties.
Qualifying Results
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Keyword: Graham Rahal on IndyCar pole for first time in six years