Palou crushes IndyCar field with another Laguna Seca pole

Alex Palou’s championship lead returned to triple digits on Saturday at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca as the Spaniard scorched his rivals by capturing pole position with a lap of 1m08.341s, more than a quarter-second faster – 0.287s – than his lone title protagonist, Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward.

Palou’s No. 10 Honda will start on pole for the second year in a row and will have O’Ward’s No. 5 Chevy alongside him (1m08.628s) and directly behind in third, Colton Herta – a two-time winner in Monterey – with the No. 26 Andretti Global Honda (1m08.882s) chasing his first victory of the season.

Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden was on a mission to overcome the heavy adversity that’s followed him all summer, and with no issues to report, he pushed the No. 2 Chevy to fourth (1m09.670s) ahead of teammate Will Power in the No. 12 Chevy (1m10.006s) and AJ Foyt Racing’s David Malukas in the No. 4 Chevy (1m10.181s).

With the point for pole, Palou went from 99 to 100 with four races to go once the 95-lap Java House Grand Prix of Monterey gets underway.

"It's been an awesome weekend, an awesome year," Palou said after the field missed out on the second practice session due to poor weather, which led everyone straight into qualifying. "Honestly, the car was really good already in practice one. Nobody did practice two.

"We didn't really know what was going to happen today. Just didn't know what the track conditions were going to be. We made some changes on the car and we just kept them. We trusted that they were going to be in the right direction. Super happy that we got to fight for pole, we got the pole, and starting on the best spot tomorrow."

O'Ward said simply, "It's my best start here, so I'll take that."

It was another good road course performance for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing with Graham Rahal and Louis Foster taking eighth and ninth, and behind them, Christian Rasmussen was strong in 11th for Ed Carpenter Racing. Among those who fell short of expectations, Penske’s Scott McLaughlin was 13th, Andretti’s Kyle Kirkwood was 18th, and Ganassi’s Scott Dixon was 19th.

The opening round of knockout qualifying saw 13 of the 27 drivers take to the track and Palou led everyone with a best lap of 1m08.665s. He transferred into the Firestone Fast 12 along with Felix Rosenqvist, Rasmussen, Christian Lundgaard, Herta and Newgarden. Done for the day were McLaughlin (13th place), Marcus Ericsson (P15), Rinus VeeKay (P17), Dixon (P19), Jacob Abel (P21), Conor Daly (P23) and Robert Shwartzman (P25).

A second group of 14 drivers was led by O’Ward with a quick lap of 1m08.751s. The others to make it into the transferring top six were Marcus Armstrong, Malukas, Power, Foster and Rahal. Kyffin Simpson (P14) was first to fail to transfer and he was followed by Nolan Siegel (P16), Kirkwood (P18), Santino Ferrucci (P20), Alexander Rossi (P22), Callum Ilott (P24), Sting Ray Robb (P26) and Devlin DeFrancesco (P27).

The Firestone Fast 12 was led by Palou at 1m08.595s, and had Rosenqvist, Herta, O’Ward, Malukas, and Newgarden continuing into the Fast 6, but an off by Rosenqvist at Turn 5, which slowed one of his rivals, led to a penalty that demoted him to 12th and promoted Power to sixth.

On the outside, Lundgaard (P7), Rahal (P8), Foster (P9), Marcus Armstrong (P10), Rasmussen (P11), and Rosenqvist completed their runs.

That left a Fast 6 to settle pole position and Palou blitzed everyone with ease.

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