Will Power/No.12 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet earned his third IndyCar Grand Prix pole position Friday afternoon at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, with a lap of 1:09.8182/125.761 mph. The two previous times Power went on to win the race – in 2015 and last year. This is his 51st Verizon P1 pole position, breaking the tie he had with teammate Helio Castroneves/No.3 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet for third place in all-time poles. It’s only 16 to go to catch all-tie leader Mario Andretti at 67 poles. AJ Foyt has 53. Today marked the 258th pole position for Team Penske.
Power said he did have to dig deep on the last lap. “That was everything I had. We made a downforce adjustment after the first round when we saw how fast the other guys were, and kind of got close to them. Then, on used tires the car was really good. I’m stoked, really stoked.Good stuff.” Power only ran two laps in the Fast Six session – one on each set of tires. “That was the plan. I felt like that would give me the best chance because I think if you went two laps on one set, you’d probably lose out on the second lap, but yeah, the tire hung on really well. It felt as good as a new.”
During the Firestone Fast Six Qualifying Session, Power led at first, before Sebastien Bourdais/No.18 Team SealMaster Dale Coyne Racing Honda pipped him. Then just as quickly, Rookie Robert Wickens/No.6 Lucas Oil SPM Honda took over the lead. Power grabbed it back at the end as the clocked ticked off.
Wickens and Bourdais finished second and third, respectively, with Wickens as the top Rookie. Fourth through sixth were James Hinchcliffe/No.5 Arrow Electronics SPM Honda, Rookie Jordan King/No.20 Ed Carpenter Racing/Fuzzy’s Vodka Chevrolet, and Josef Newgarden/No.1 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet.
The entire field of 24 cars was covered by 0.9212 seconds.The fastest car went 125.761 mph, while the slowest one was 124.123 mph. That’s only a difference of 1.638 mph. Pretty competitive bunch! Power said “I’m not surprised at all. You look at the competition, the guys that are up here, it’s totally expected. Young guys are coming in, rookies are really fast, and obviously guys that have been around a long time and won championships. I mean, it’s just the tightest field there’s ever been in IndyCar, and the level of the teams is the best it’s ever been, so it’s no surprise the way it is right now.”
For the first time in three years, Scott Dixon/No.9 PNC Bank Chip Ganassi Racing Honda failed to advance out of the first qualifying round. He will start 18th. “The PNC Bank car actually wasn’t too bad earlier this morning in cooler conditions. We took a pretty hefty swing at it for qualifying, but the car didn’t feel like it had speed – it was just sort of on top of the track. That condition got worse as it got hotter and hotter, unfortunately. We’ll get back to a setup we know and then try and take it from there. Today, it just seemed like the heat made everything worse for us.”
In the Fast Six conference, it was difficult getting them to take themselves seriously – at least the five veterans-which included Wickens in this instance as he’s been around racetracks and for awhile. Rookie King was more serious, while the others were about as jolly as anyone has seen all of them together in a long time.(Except when someone tried to photograph them laughing.)
Bourdais said he was “I had a really good run and was P1 for a portion. That was about as good of a lap as I was going to get. … It was a good run and just made a small mistake in the last run. The car was okay but just kind of average, and then we put the Firestone red tires on, and it definitely came to life. The car was perfect to begin with. I made a mistake in Q2; and in Q3 I made a little mistake. We’re a very limited-resource team, so good results means a lot. Hats off to the team, they did a great job. I’m looking forward to a trouble-free race.”
Wickens, explaining how he and teammate Hinchcliffe get anything done when they joke around so much: “We normally get kicked out of the engineering office. Yeah, I think that they’re calling us the productivity sponge, kind of what’s going on when we joined the room. But I think there’s times to joke around and there’s times to work. I mean, we’re both professionals, even though we clown around a lot. We do okay. We get it done. It takes longer, but we get it done.” He added, “Great job by the SPM guys – we got both cars in the Firestone Fast Six. I’m a bit gutted with P2… We’re obviously in the front row, but when you lead the whole qualifying, you want to finish like that. It was close. I ended up losing a few hundredths (of a second) in the end, but I can see why – it wasn’t the tidiest lap. You have to do the perfect job to get the pole here, but I’m happy to be back in the Fast Six.”
King has made the Fast Six twice in his first four races, but was’t surprised. “I wouldn’t say I’ve surprised myself. I’m more just focusing on doing my own job and doing it at my own speed, and it’s proven to work. It’s not so much that I’m constantly looking at the timing and scoring and seeing where I am, I’m just getting on with it, and where I end up is where I end up.” He waited until (almost) the last minute to go out. “I was quite confident.”
Hinchcliffe defended his agricultural maneuvers in the first session, saying “That was the plan. We were just practicing for if you get spun out in the race. I was just spinning out a lot to make sure my style was working.” But seriously folks … “It was a bad day to have a bad day with the compressed schedule, and we had a really bad Practice 2. We had some braking problems… we couldn’t develop the car at all. Luckily, we have a solid teammate in Robbie (Wickens), and he was quick in that second session. We were really able to lean on him and it shows.”
Newgarden said ” I think the big thing was getting in the Fast Six for us. Unfortunately that was kind of my goal. We’d been in the top 10, just kind of hovering in it. We haven’t been super strong this weekend, been kind of tentative throughout. So he put in a good lap, so congrats to him. That was a good lap he did at the end. I think we would have been okay.We ran out the one lap, had a huge lockup in Turn 1 with the rear, and then just didn’t really get to finish it. Not ultimately where we would have landed, but I think we were in that third or fourth range, so happy to be in the Fast Six.”
Sunday’s 85-lap race will be telecast live on ABC at 3:30pm ET/12;30pm PT.
OFFICIAL INDYCAR GP QUALIFYING RESULTS
1. (12) Will Power, Chevrolet, 1:09.8182 (125.761 mph)
2. (6) Robert Wickens, Honda, 1:09.9052 (125.604)
3. (18) Sebastien Bourdais, Honda, 1:09.9449 (125.533)
4. (5) James Hinchcliffe, Honda, 1:10.0858 (125.281)
5. (20) Jordan King, Chevrolet, 1:10.1326 (125.197)
6. (1) Josef Newgarden, Chevrolet, 1:10.7276 (124.144)
7. (22) Simon Pagenaud, Chevrolet, 1:10.0382 (125.366)
8. (27) Alexander Rossi, Honda, 1:10.1062 (125.244)
9. (21) Spencer Pigot, Chevrolet, 1:10.1601 (125.148)
10. (3) Helio Castroneves, Chevrolet, 1:10.1847 (125.104)
11. (30) Takuma Sato, Honda, 1:10.1979 (125.081)
12. (14) Tony Kanaan, Chevrolet, 1:10.3592 (124.794)
13. (28) Ryan Hunter-Reay, Honda, 1:10.0985 (125.258)
14. (98) Marco Andretti, Honda, 1:10.1044 (125.247)
15. (10) Ed Jones, Honda, 1:10.2859 (124.924)
16. (59) Max Chilton, Chevrolet, 1:10.2113 (125.057)
17. (15) Graham Rahal, Honda, 1:10.3605 (124.792)
18. (9) Scott Dixon, Honda, 1:10.3221 (124.860)
19. (19) Zachary Claman De Melo, Honda, 1:10.5064 (124.533)
20. (26) Zach Veach, Honda, 1:10.3371 (124.833)
21. (4) Matheus Leist, Chevrolet, 1:10.6425 (124.293)
22. (88) Gabby Chaves, Chevrolet, 1:10.5066 (124.533)
23. (23) Charlie Kimball, Chevrolet, 1:10.7784 (124.055)
24. (32) Kyle Kaiser, Chevrolet, 1:10.7394 (124.123)