Morning Warm-Up: Mid-Ohio 2019

Back on pole position, Will Power is ready to pounce for his first Mid-Ohio victory

Will Power won his 57th IndyCar pole position with a lap of 65.1569 seconds in the final round of qualifying and Power is now ten pole positions behind Mario Andretti's all-time record. This is Power's first pole position since Austin in March. He has now won four pole positions at Mid-Ohio, matching the number of runner-up finishes he has had at the track. He is looking for his first Mid-Ohio victory and Mid-Ohio could be the 21st different track where Power has a victory. It would put Power into sole possession of fourth most different tracks won at. Power has won at least one race from pole position in the last ten consecutive seasons. He needs to lead seven more laps to reach the 4,000 laps led milestone and he would become the 11th driver to reach that milestone joining Mario Andretti, Michael Andretti, A.J. Foyt, Hélio Castroneves, Al Unser, Scott Dixon, Bobby Unser, Dario Franchitti, Paul Tracy and Tony Kanaan.

Alexander Rossi missed out on pole position to Power by 0.3748 seconds but Rossi will start second and it is his sixth front row start of the season. Rossi's average finish in his first five starts from the front row this season is 3.6 with two victories, three podium finishes and four top five finishes. He has seven consecutive top ten finishes. Rossi has not led a lap in the prior two races. The last time he went three consecutive races without leading a lap was last year at Road America, Iowa and Toronto and his average finish over those three races was 11th. After leading a lap in only seven of his first 33 IndyCar starts, Rossi has led a lap in 18 of his last 29 starts. Rossi is coming off announcing a contract extension with Andretti Autosport prior to qualifying on Saturday and Honda will remain as the engine supplier to the team.

Josef Newgarden will start third in what was his sixth consecutive Fast Six appearance at Mid-Ohio. This will be Newgarden's fourth consecutive top five start and his eighth consecutive top ten start. Newgarden needs to lead 18 laps led to reach the 2,000 laps led milestone and he would be the 24th driver to reach that milestone. He has only led laps in one of the previous four natural-terrain road course races this season. He led 20 laps in the Grand Prix of Indianapolis. Simon Pagenaud makes it an all-Penske row two. Pagenaud has seven consecutive top ten finishes at Mid-Ohio with five of those results being top five finishes. Despite his finishes, this was only the third time Pagenaud has made the Fast Six at Mid-Ohio. This is only the third time Pagenaud has made the Fast Six in 2019 and he had only two Fast Six appearances in 2018.

Sébastien Bourdais qualified in the top five for only the third time this season and joining Bourdais on row three is the driver he is tied with for tenth in the championship, Felix Rosenqvist. Bourdais enters the weekend holding the tiebreaker over Rosenqvist with a third place finish being Bourdais' best of the season to Rosenqvist's best finish being fourth. Bourdais needs to lead 52 laps to pass Johnny Rutherford for 20th all-time in laps led. Bourdais has only led once in eight Mid-Ohio starts and he led 38 laps from pole position in the 2014 race. Rosenqvist is one of ten drivers on the grid who could score their first career victory this weekend. The last driver to score a first career IndyCar victory in July was Robert Doornbos on July 1, 2007 at Mont-Tremblant. The last time IndyCar raced on July 28th, there was a first time winner; Tomas Scheckter won at Michigan.

Colton Herta starts seventh at Mid-Ohio after he started outside the top ten in the prior two races. Herta had started in the top ten in the nine races prior to Toronto. Herta is coming off his sixth retirement of the season at Iowa after suffering a half shaft failure. Herta has the fifth best average starting position at 7.46 but of the drivers to run majority of the first 12 races he ranks 19th in average finish at 15.583. Next to Herta on row four is Scott Dixon. Dixon has finished runner-up in the last two races. On 13 different occasions has a driver had three consecutive runner-up finishes with the most recent occurrence being Hélio Castroneves in 2008 at Mid-Ohio, Edmonton and Kentucky. Dixon had three consecutive runner-up finishes in 2003 at Chicagoland, Fontana and Texas. No driver has had three consecutive runner-up finishes on multiple occasions. Dixon has five runner-up finishes this season, the 20th time a driver has had at least five runner-up finishes in a season. Dixon starts eighth for the second consecutive race and he has never won from eighth on the grid.

Jack Harvey returns to IndyCar are taking the previous two races off and he will start ninth. This was the fourth time Harvey has made it to the second round of qualifying this season. Harvey started and finished 20th last year at Mid-Ohio. Meyer Shank Racing was the runner-up finish in the GT Daytona class at Mid-Ohio back in May with Mario Farnbacher and Trent Hindman in the #86 Acura NSX GT3. Ryan Hunter-Reay rounds out the top ten on the grid. Hunter-Reay has 11 top ten finishes in 13 Mid-Ohio starts but he has only three top five finishes at the track. Hunter-Reay's first career podium finish came at Mid-Ohio when he finished third in 2003. He finished third again in 2011 and he picked up a fifth place finish in the 2013 race. He has only led a lap in three Mid-Ohio starts.

Schmidt Peterson Motorsports swept row six with James Hinchcliffe qualifying ahead of Marcus Ericsson. Hinchcliffe is coming off a third place finish at Iowa and Hinchcliffe has never had consecutive podium finishes in his IndyCar career. In the race after his 16 prior podium finishes, he has finished in the top five only three times with a fourth at Fontana in 2013 after a third at Houston, a fifth at Mid-Ohio in 2016 after a third at Toronto and a fourth at Toronto last year after he won at Iowa. Ericsson has been beaten in qualifying on 11 of 13 occasions and Hinchcliffe has finished ahead of Ericsson in the race ten of 12 times. Ericsson has not qualified ahead of his teammate since the Indianapolis 500 and in fact the only facility where Ericsson has qualified ahead of Hinchcliffe is Indianapolis Motor Speedway as the Swede beat the Canadian in Grand Prix of Indianapolis qualifying as well.

Spencer Pigot and Santino Ferrucci both missed out on advancing from the first round of qualifying by less than 0.03 seconds and they will start 13th and 14th respectively. This is Pigot's best starting position at Mid-Ohio. Pigot is looking for consecutive top five finishes for the first time in his IndyCar career. He is one top five finish away from most top five finishes in a single season of his IndyCar career. Ferrucci finished where he started last week at Iowa in 12th, the first time he has not finished better than his starting position since Long Beach when he started 13th and finished 21st. After finishing a lap down at Iowa, Ferrucci and Alexander Rossi are now tied for most laps completed this season having each completed 1,427 of 1,431 laps.

Graham Rahal will start 15th in his home race. Rahal has not led double-digit laps in a race since the 2017 Indianapolis 500 where he led 12 laps. In Rahal's previous 12 seasons in IndyCar he has only led three-digit laps in a season once, when he led 110 laps in the 2017 season, 96 of those laps came at the Belle Isle doubleheader, where Rahal swept the races. He won from 13th at Mid-Ohio in 2015. Rahal's best finish from 15th starting position is seventh at Iowa in 2014 and at Barber last year. Max Chilton, the driver of the #59 Chevrolet, will be making his 60th IndyCar start this weekend from 16th on the grid. He has one top ten start over his previous 29 races with that being sixth at Mid-Ohio last year. The only driver to score a first career victory in a 60th career start was Max Papis, who won at Homestead on March 26, 2000.

Takuma Sato starts 17th, his worst starting position since he started 20th in the season opener at St. Petersburg. This is only the third time in 2019 that both Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing entries starts outside the top ten. Sato has finished outside the top fifteen in the 13th race of the season on seven of nine occasions. His only top ten finishes were seventh at Loudon in 2011 and fifth at Mid-Ohio in 2017. Ed Jones will start 18th, his worst Mid-Ohio starting position. Jones has only one top ten finish through his first ten starts of 2019. Jones had at least five top ten finishes in the first ten starts of his first two IndyCar seasons. After having double top ten finishes in 2015 and 2016, Ed Carpenter Racing has not had a top ten finisher the last two years at Mid-Ohio.

Marco Andretti and Zach Veach form an all-Andretti Autosport row ten. Andretti has never led a lap nor finished in the top five at Mid-Ohio in 12 starts. He did have five consecutive top ten finishes from 2009 to 2013. He has been running at the finish of the last four Mid-Ohio races with finishes of tenth, 13th, 12th and 11th. Veach completed all 300 laps at Iowa from 20th starting position and he finished seventh, his best finish of the season. Veach has had consecutive lead lap finishes only four times in his career and he has never had three consecutive lead lap finishes. The first time Veach had consecutive lead lap finishes was at Long Beach and Barber last year, the second time was the Belle Isle doubleheader last year with the third time being Toronto and Mid-Ohio last year. The only time he has had consecutive lead lap finishes in 2019 was the Belle Isle doubleheader.

Matheus Leist will be on the inside of row eleven, his tenth time starting 20th or worse this season. Leist has finished off the lead lap in the last six consecutive races, in nine of 12 races this season and he has finished off the lead lap in 16 of 29 races in his IndyCar career. Only two drivers have picked up their first career victory in the 30th start of their career: Tom Sneva at Michigan in 1975 and Dario Franchitti at Road America in 1998. RC Enerson makes his first IndyCar start since the 2016 IndyCar season finale at Sonoma and he will start 22nd. Enerson made his IndyCar debut at Mid-Ohio in 2016. He started 18th in that race and worked his way into the top ten before he stalled on a pit stop after running out of fuel. This cost Enerson a lap and he finished 19th on debut.

Tony Kanaan rounds out the grid in 23rd position. Kanaan has made 17 starts at Mid-Ohio but he has never finished on the podium at the track. This is the track where Kanaan has made the most starts but has never finished in the top three. The track where Kanaan has made the second most but has never finished on the podium is Barber, where he has made ten starts and his best finish there is sixth. He has made nine starts at Portland without a podium finish and his best Portland finish was fourth in 1998. His best Mid-Ohio finish was fourth in 2007.

NBC's coverage of the Honda Indy 200 from Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course begins at 4:00 p.m. ET with green flag scheduled for 4:05 p.m. ET. The race is scheduled for 90 laps.