Palou stretches IndyCar pole streak to five at Road America

Alex Palou wasn’t happy with the handling of his No. 10 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda after this morning’s practice session where he placed sixth, so the call was made to revert to the chassis setup he liked from Friday and it clearly did the trick as the championship leader captured his sixth pole of the season – and fifth straight – with a bold lap of 1m43.662s to clear Team Penske’s David Malukas by 0.3s.

“It's always surprising,” Palou said of his lap that resulted in his first Road America pole at the XPEL Grand Prix. “It's always so fun and so tough to get it right. I think everything is so tight that, yeah, still surprises.”

The setup switch made all the difference.

“We thought we were going one direction, and that it was going to be hopefully better or easier to drive this morning. It was the opposite,” he added. “We just went back. Luckily it was good. I think the track not evolving too much, it kind of made our qualifying easier on going back on setup.”

Malukas, the qualifying leader once again for Penske, produced a strong lap (1m43.954s) to out-pace an all-Meyer Shank Racing second row led by Marcus Armstrong in third with the No. 66 Honda (1m44.023s) and Felix Rosenqvist in the sister No. 60 Honda (1m44.050s).

“P4 and I feel like it was all I had,” Rosenqvist said. “Didn’t really make any mistakes. We were kind of on the back foot from practice and kept getting it better and better through qualifying after transferring out of Q1. So, I think we did a good job bouncing back from that. I didn’t really have a perfect weekend leading up to quali, and I think that’s probably what got us a little bit. But, second row lockout for MSR is great, and I think we have a good shot for tomorrow."

Andretti Global was headed by Marcus Ericsson in the No. 28 Honda (1m44.174s) and the Firestone Fast Six was completed by Penske’s Scott McLaughlin in the No. 3 Chevy (1m44.824s).

Impressive performances were produced throughout the rest of the Fast 12 as AJ Foyt Racing fired Santino Ferrucci into seventh and rookie teammate Caio Collet secured ninth for the Chevy-powered team, and they enveloped Arrow McLaren’s Nolan Siegel who took eighth while teammates Pato O’Ward (10th) and Christian Lundgaard 13th) were unable to match his output.

Saddled with a six-position grid penalty for an unapproved engine change, Ferrucci will take the start from 13th and Siegel and the others in his proximity will move up one spot.

"Overall, happy with our weekend so far,” Siegel said. “We could have definitely been in the Firestone Fast 6 there. Missed it a little bit on my side but excited about tomorrow starting P7. That’s our best starting spot this year. Things are moving in the right direction. We’ll keep them moving in the right direction tomorrow and have a good day."

Of those with a lot of ground to cover during Sunday’s 55-lap race, Andretti’s Kyle Kirkwood is a distant 18th, Graham Rahal is 20th, and former race winner Alexander Rossi, who qualified 21st, will take the green flag from the back of the field after serving a six-position penalty for his unapproved engine change.

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