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| Rinus VeeKay sits on pole position for first Harvest GP race |
Rinus VeeKay scored his first career pole position with a lap of 69.6903 seconds in qualifying for Harvest Grand Prix Race One. This is Ed Carpenter Racing's first pole position on a road course in team history. Three of ECR's previous four pole positions have come at Indianapolis, but on the oval for Indianapolis 500 qualifying with team owner Ed Carpenter. VeeKay picked up his first career top five finish on the IMS road course in July with a fifth-place finish. He was also fourth in the second Gateway race. The last Ed Carpenter Racing driver with three top five finishes in a season was Josef Newgarden in 2016, who had six that season. ECR has not had a podium finish on a road course since Newgarden was second at Watkins Glen in 2016 and the team has not won a road/street course race since Toronto 2015, when Newgarden led a 1-2 victory for then CFH Racing with Luca Filippi in second.
Josef Newgarden will start next to his old car on the front row and because of the doubleheader qualifying format, since Newgarden topped his group, he got a bonus point and cut the gap to Scott Dixon in the championship down to 71 points. This is Newgarden's best starting position on the IMS road course. This is Newgarden's second-worst track with at least three starts. Newgarden's average finish on the IMS road course is 14.6 and only picked up his first top ten finish at the track in July when he was seventh. He has led a lap in the last three IMS road course races. The only track where Newgarden has a worse average finish is Fontana at 16.8.
Colton Herta missed out on pole position by 0.0145 seconds and will start in third position. Herta is looking for his second consecutive victory after he won the second Mid-Ohio race last month. Herta has never had consecutive podium finishes in his career and his three victories are his only three podium finishes in his career. His father Bryan never won consecutive races and the only time Bryan had consecutive podium finishes were three consecutive third-place finishes at Kentucky, Nazareth and Chicagoland in 2003.
Will Power joins Herta on row two. This is the 12th time Power has started fourth in his career. He has won four of those previous 11 starts, but he has finished 14th or worse in five of those starts from fourth. This is one of five tracks where he has three victories. The other tracks are Pocono, São Paulo, Sonoma and Toronto. Power is one of four drivers to have completed all 581 laps run on the IMS road course.
Marco Andretti will start fifth, a personal best for him on the IMS road course and his first top five start on a road course since fourth in the 2018 season finale at Sonoma. It has been 154 starts since Marco Andretti's most recent victory at Iowa in 2011. That is currently 30 starts more than the current record for most starts between victories. Graham Rahal had 124 starts between his victories at St. Petersburg in 2008 and Fontana in 2015. Andretti has finished worse than his starting position in seven of 11 races. He has won on the IMS road course before, in Indy Lights in 2005 when the Liberty Challenge was a support race for the the United States Grand Prix.
Jack Harvey starts next to Andretti in an all-pink car row six. This is Harvey's 13th time in 31 races he is starting in the top ten. In those previous 12 races, he has six top ten finishes. He has the seventh-best average starting position this season at 9.25. Like Andretti, Harvey has an Indy Lights victory on the IMS road course and that came in 2015.
Felix Rosenqvist qualified seventh and he will hope to do better than his Grand Prix of Indianapolis performance. In July, Rosenqvist started ninth on this track but dropped to 15th. He has finished worse than his starting position in six of 11 races this season. He has not led more than eight laps in a race this year. He led eight laps in his victory at Road America in July and he led eight laps in the Indianapolis 500. Last year, he led 15 laps or more in three races, including 15 laps led from pole position in the Grand Prix of Indianapolis.
Alexander Rossi starts eighth. Rossi has consecutive podium finishes entering the first race of the Harvest Grand Prix. Rossi has had a stretch of three consecutive podium finishes in each of the last two seasons. In 2018, he had two stretches, starting the season with a third, a third and a first at St. Petersburg, Phoenix and Long Beach respectively. Later that season, he won at Mid-Ohio and Pocono before finishing second at Gateway. Last year, he was second at Texas, won at Road America and was third at Toronto.
Max Chilton is coming off his best finish of the season, a 13th in the second Mid-Ohio race, and he will start ninth for the first Harvest Grand Prix race, his best start of the season. Back in July, Chilton started tenth, but finished 16th in the Grand Prix of Indianapolis. His best finish on the IMS road course was seventh in 2017. Chilton has not had a top ten finish in his last 36 starts.
Patricio O'Ward rounds out the top ten. O'Ward will be making his 20th career start and he could become the fourth driver to get a first career victory in a 20th career start joining Walt Brown, Bobby Grim and Justin Wilson. O'Ward has finished better than his starting position in eight races. He started and finished 12th in the second Iowa race. In the two races where he finished worse than his starting position, O'Ward was second from pole position in the second Road America race and third from second on the grid in the first Gateway race.
Graham Rahal rolls off from 11th on the grid. Rahal has not won a race in his last 54 starts. His most recent victory was the second race of the 2017 Belle Isle doubleheader. In his last 54 starts, he has six podium finishes, 16 top five finishes and 38 top ten finishes. The only times Rahal has had a podium finish in one of the final three races of a season was a third in the penultimate race of 2009 at Motegi and second in the 2016 finale at Sonoma. He has won three times when starting outside the top ten, including from 13th at Mid-Ohio in 2015.
Scott Dixon will start 12th and with Newgarden topping his qualifying group, Dixon's lead is shaved down to a 71-point championship lead after Newgarden topped group one. Dixon could clinch the championship today if he finishes second and scores at least one bonus point with Newgarden finishing in 25th. If Dixon wins the race and only scores one bonus point, he would need Newgarden to finish 15th or worse to clinch the title. Dixon was tenth in his last two starts at Mid-Ohio. Dixon has not had three consecutive races without a top five finish since 2017, when he had finishes of eighth, tenth, ninth and sixth from Iowa to Pocono.
Ryan Hunter-Reay scored his worst starting position of the season in 13th. Prior to this, Hunter-Reay had started 12th three times in 2020. In Hunter-Reay's career, he has finished in the top five of the 12th race of the season only twice, third at Mid-Ohio in 2011 and a victory at Iowa in 2014. He has finished outside the top ten in nine of the 15 times he has contested the 12th race and six of those were finishes outside the top fifteen.
Conor Daly will start 14th, 13 positions behind ECR teammates Rinus VeeKay. Daly has yet to be the top finisher in a race for Ed Carpenter Racing in 2020. Daly's average finish in five starts with Carlin was ninth with four top ten finishes. With ECR, his average finish is 18.1667 with his best finish being 12th, which came at the Grand Prix of Indianapolis.
For the second consecutive race, Marcus Ericsson occupies the 15th position on the grid. Ericsson has seven top ten finishes this season, but the only time he has been the top Ganassi finisher was in the last race at Mid-Ohio when finished fifth. Ericsson led his fourth lap of the season in that Mid-Ohio race. He has led six races in his IndyCar career, but he has never led more than two laps in a race. He led one lap in the Grand Prix of Indianapolis in July.
Sébastien Bourdais makes his 2020 IndyCar season debut from 16th position in the #14 Chevrolet for A.J. Foyt Racing. This is A.J. Foyt Racing's second-best starting position on a road course this season. Charlie Kimball started 13th for the second Road America race. This is the fifth different team Bourdais has driven for in his IndyCar career. He has had at least one podium finish in the last seven seasons, and he has won a race in five of the last six seasons. His best finish on the IMS road course is fourth, which came in 2014, 2015 and 2018.
Álex Palou is 17th in the championship and he will start 17th for this race. Palou has alternated top Dale Coyne Racing finisher with teammate Ferrucci in the last six races. Palou has not had a top ten finish in the last seven races, but he has been the top DCR finisher in four of those races.
James Hinchcliffe replaces Zach Veach in the #26 Gainbridge Honda and Hinchcliffe will start 18th. Veach was averaging a starting position of 17.9 in the #26 Honda. In the 12th race of the season, Hinchcliffe has finished in the top five the last four years, and he has finished in the top ten the last seven times he has started the 12th race of the season.
Hélio Castroneves will make his first start with Arrow McLaren SP from 19th position. The last time Castroneves started 19th was the 2017 Indianapolis 500, where he finished second. This is the first time Castroneves has driven for a team other than Team Penske since October 31, 1999 when he drove for Hogan Racing at Fontana. Castroneves has won the last three IMSA races with Acura Team Penske and co-driver Ricky Taylor.
Santino Ferrucci rounds out the top twenty on the grid, his worst starting position on a road course this season. Ferrucci has only led laps at three tracks in his IndyCar, Gateway, Belle Isle and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval. This will be Ferrucci's 33rd career start. The only driver to pick up a first career victory in a 33rd career start was Johnny Rutherford at Atlanta in 1965.
Sage Karam returns for his third start of the season in the #24 Oil2Soil Chevrolet for Dreyer & Reinbold Racing and he will start 21st, his best starting position of 2020. Karam will have contested every race at IMS in 2020 and this will be his most starts in a season since he ran 12 of 16 races in 2015. He has finished outside the top twenty in his last four starts and seven of his last eight starts dating back to the 2016 Indianapolis 500. The one exception was a 19th-place finish in the 2019 Indianapolis 500.
Simon Pagenaud will start 22nd, the fifth time he has started outside the top twenty this season after having only five starts outside the top twenty in 114 races from Texas 2013 to the end of the 2019 season. Pagenaud has not had a top five finishes in the last five races. This is Pagenaud's longest stretch without a top five results since he opened the 2018 season with eight consecutive finishes outside the top five. He has five top five finishes in seven IMS road course starts. He has finished in the top five in the 12th race of the season the last four years. Pagenaud did win the other scheduled Friday race earlier this season at Iowa.
Charlie Kimball will start 23rd for the second consecutive race. After finishing fifth in the first three Grand Prix of Indianapolis, Kimball has finished 21st, 20th and 18th in his last three starts on the IMS road course. He has finished outside the top ten in the last seven races, his longest stretch since he did not get a top ten in the final three races of 2014 and the first four races of 2015. That slump ended with a fifth-place finish in the Grand Prix of Indianapolis.
Takuma Sato brought out a red flag in the first qualifying group and Sato will start 24th, his worst starting position since he stared 24th in the 2015 Indianapolis 500. Sato has won one of the final three races in each of the last two seasons. However, outside of those two victories, Sato has no other podium finishes this late in the season. The only other time he has finished in the top five this late in a season was a fourth at Sonoma in 2014 and he has finished outside the top fifteen on fifteen occasions in the final three races of the season.
Dalton Kellett will make his final two starts of the season this weekend in the #41 Chevrolet for A.J. Foyt Racing and he will start the weekend from 25th on the grid. Kellett's best finish was 20th in both Road America races. He has not finished on the lead lap yet his season.
USA's coverage of Harvest Grand Prix race one will begin at 3:30 p.m. ET with green flag scheduled for 4:00 p.m. ET. The race is scheduled for 85 laps.
