Palou puts Honda colors up front with Detroit IndyCar pole

Alex Palou added one point to his IndyCar Series championship lead after securing his third consecutive pole position of the season with a blast to P1 on Saturday in the No. 10 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda at the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix.

It was the 16th pole of Palou’s career as he was the only driver to crack the 1m02s threshold with a 1m01.901s tour of the 1.7-mile street course.

“I felt really good with my lap,” Palou said. “I thought there was not much more margin from my side, so I just tried to put everything together. The big day is tomorrow.”

It was an all-Honda front row with Andretti Global’s Will Power next to Palou in the No. 26 car (1m02.124s) and Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin took third as the first Bowtie representative with his No. 3 Chevy.

“I was really loose, but we’re in a great spot to fight tomorrow,” he said.

Palou’s teammate Scott Dixon was trending towards pole early in his lap but frequent oversteer added time which left the No. 9 Honda in fourth (1m02.608s). Arrow McLaren’s Christian Lundgaard was best for his team, but lacked overall speed and settled for fifth with the No. 7 Chevy (1m02.787s), and Andretti’s Kyle Kirkwood was looking like a pole contender but lost a lot of time on his ragged run and ended up sixth in the No. 27 Honda (1m03.030s).

Elsewhere, Marcus Armstrong led the Indianapolis 500 winners at Meyer Shank Racing in P8, and Christian Rasmussen – rebounding after a disappointing Speedway experience – was P9 for ECR. Louis Foster was the top driver for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing (P11) and Arrow McLaren’s Nolan Siegel continued his strong form (P13).

Indy 500 winner Felix Rosenqvist was disappointed in his run (P16), while Josef Newgarden – limited with his foot injury from last weekend – persevered through the pain to P21. Two sizable crashes left Mick Schumacher of RLL in P23 and David Malukas from Penske P25. Both were uninjured, but the hit from Malukas on his No. 12 will require his team to prepare a fresh car for Sunday.

The opening round of the Firestone Fast 12 pitted 12 of the 25 drivers against each other, and of the split groups, Group 1 was the easier of the two. All was going well until Schumacher slammed the wall with the right side of his car and triggered a red flag with 2m30s left on the clock.

Although the session would resume, the time remaining wasn’t enough for most drivers on the wrong side of the top-six cutoff line to suitably warm their alternate compound tires and fire in laps to make the transfer. Pato O’Ward was the lone driver to stick with the harder primary compound and he was fastest at the time of the red flag. Once Schumacher’s car was removed, the group returned to the track and Armstrong was the only driver – sitting eighth – to leap across the line and managed to set the best lap of all as his alternates edges O’Ward’s primaries by 0.033s.

Armstrong, O’Ward, Dixon, Lundgaard, Foster and Marcus Ericsson moved forward. Done for the day were Siegel (P13), Dennis Hauger (P15), Kyffin Simpson (P17), Caio Collet (P19), Newgarden (P21) and Schumacher (P23).

The second group of 13 drivers was looking sorted until the checkered flag as Malukas was up and about to move into the top six when he crashed hard on approach to the alternate start/finish line. Unable to complete the lap, he was left on the outside of the Fast 12.

Kirkwood, Palou, McLaughlin, Power, Graham Rahal and Rasmussen transferred to the next round. Done for the day were Alexander Rossi (P14), Felix Rosenqvist (P16), Rinus VeeKay (P18), Romain Grosjean (P20), Malukas (P22), Santino Ferrucci (P24), and Sting Ray Robb (P25).

Shifting to the Fast 12, and epic battle ensued with the transferring six led by McLaughlin, Power, Kirkwood, Palou, Lundgaard and Dixon. Seventh through 12th were set by O’Ward, Rasmussen, Ericsson, Armstrong, Foster and Rahal.

In the single-car run for pole, McLaughlin went first and recorded a 1m02.455s lap. Power went second and produced a 1m02.124s lap to move to P1. Kirkwood was the third to qualify and was crossed up on multiple occasions; he crossed the line with a 1m03.030s as the last slide robbed a lot of time. Palou went fourth and was aiming to capture his third consecutive pole; his lap of 1m01.901s was mostly clean and rest the standard. Lundgaard was the penultimate runner and set a 1m02.787s, and Palou’s teammate Dixon closed the session with a 1m02.608.

Alex Palou, pole position.

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