Herta rediscovers qualifying form with Road America pole

Colton Herta notched his 10th IndyCar pole position at the scene of his first pole at Road America, and it’s also the first pole of a rollercoaster 2023 season for the Andretti Autosport driver.

His qualifying average was 13.1 heading into this weekend, and he appeared to have lacked that stunning one-lap pace he has pulled out frequently in the past, but there was no doubting his speed at the resurfaced Wisconsin venue.

Once it was clear that the hard tyre would be better than the soft, it fell to a five-way fight for pole with Herta jumping to the top just before Josef Newgarden spun and took himself out of the equation at the very end of the Fast Six session.

Herta said his car was “great” and thanked his crew as Andretti took a second Road America pole in a row.

Alexander Rossi topped both practices off the back of his pole position with Andretti last year and led Arrow McLaren’s effort until the final part of qualifying where Pato O’Ward emerged as Herta’s closest challenger instead.

O’Ward’s first IndyCar pole also came at Road America like Herta, but he’ll settle for second after a tough couple of races with crashes at the Indianapolis 500 and Detroit street race.

The 51-point championship leader and winner of the last two pole positions, Alex Palou, was third for Ganassi albeit almost three tenths of a second off Herta’s benchmark. Palou is the only driver to qualify in the top nine at every race this year and has an average start of 3.5.

He crashed in second practice so it was a stunning turnaround by driver and team to make it work.

Newgarden took fourth, the Indy 500 winner making the Fast Six in the last two races, ahead of Rossi who was almost one second off.

For the second time this year Kyle Kirkwood advanced from a qualifying session but wasn’t able to take part. On the previous occasion he’d crashed, but this time a puff of smoke from the rear-right signified a mechanical issue he had to pull over for. He will start sixth.

Christian Lundgaard had been fast in both practice sessions and continued his strong form on road courses for Rahal Letterman Lanigan by taking seventh, missing out on the pole group by 0.0532s.

Ganassi Marcuses Armstrong and Ericsson took eighth and ninth, with the former impressing as a rookie at this challenging track and the latter lamenting a mistake on a final lap which should have put him in the top six.

After taking an ample six engineers to a one-car test at the track last week, AJ Foyt benefitted with its best road course performance in qualifying this year so far.

Rookie Benjamin Pedersen’s best IndyCar qualifying performance so far in 10th beat team-mate Santino Ferrucci, with Devlin DeFrancesco in 12th for the second race in a row for Andretti.

After running really well in practice, Dale Coyne’s David Malukas was the first driver to miss out in the group sessions and starts 13th. Despite a tough season to date he was visibly disappointed with the result although it’s his best road/street course start.

Graham Rahal was the first driver to miss out in the second group of Q1, after returnee Ryan Hunter-Reay’s late crash made it difficult for anyone to get tyre temperature and meant the top six from before the crash were unchallenged.

Among those missing out were ace 2023 qualifier Felix Rosenqvist (16th) and Penske’s Scott McLaughlin (18th).

Romain Grosjean was the only one of the four Andretti drivers not to proceed from the first group after spinning early at Turn 14 and then running wide at Turn 1.

“The car is broken, it doesn’t matter what you do [to it] it’s broken,” Grosjean said, and will start 19th.

Grosjean was also told he needed a “punch in the face” and was a “piece of crap” by Will Power, who had shoved Scott Dixon following a big practice crash earlier that day.

Power will start 22nd, ahead of Dixon. In morning practice Dixon had crashed into Power and put both of them in a concrete wall when he didn’t see Power coming up behind him after a spin.

Power’s Grosjean insults were spurred by a practice incident where Grosjean blocked him on the straight.

Qualifying Results

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