IndyCar's single-lap Fast Six creates new challenges at Long Beach

The IndyCar Series is making use of its new single-car Firestone Fast Six qualifying process during today’s run for the pole at the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach. It’s a unique ask of the series’ fastest drivers, who are dispatched from the end of pit lane to make their way around the 1.9-mile street course and fire into one lap of madness to set their starting position.

Where it gets interesting is in the time it takes to bring Firestone’s fastest alternate compound up to perfect operating temperature… which drivers have described as being three to four laps.

Without peak temperature and grip, IndyCar’s Fast Six street course qualifiers will need to hang onto their cars on those manic laps, which led some teams to use Friday’s practice session – the only session prior to qualifying where the red-banded alternates are made available – to simulate the short-burst runs.

“We did a little bit, actually,” Andretti Global’s Will Power told RACER. “No one's going to get the most out of their car on just one lap. It's a little bit of a pity, because it's cool when you had (the regular Fast Six), you put in a banker (lap), and then you can scrape some walls. But I think on one lap, you're going to be somewhat conservative.”

For Power, who was fastest on Friday and owns IndyCar’s all-time record for pole positions, there’s a reason to adjust activities in practice to prepare for being in the Fast Six. But for Arrow McLaren’s Christian Lundgaard (pictured above), who isn’t a regular threat for pole, there was no need to prep for the new challenges in single-lap runs.

“We actually haven't done anything,” Lundgaard said. “It's a quite simple answer: you still have to make it to the Fast Six before that even becomes a topic. You really just have to get through Q1 and Q2. That's pretty standard approach from how it's always been.”

The driver of the No. 7 Chevy believes Fast Six runners will save their new sets of alternate tires for the big 90-lap event on Sunday.

“I don't think anyone specifically this weekend will use any new tires [in the Fast Six], because that means the set of tires they'll run in the race will have a run on them,” he said.

“I think it definitely makes it a little more interesting that there's strategy in Q2 now. In the Fast 12, I want to be the fastest in the Fast 12 as well, take a little more risk. At the end of the day the worst thing that can happen in the Fast Six, if you don't nail it, is you start sixth. If you don't nail Q2, you can be 12th. That's a huge deficit.”