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| Colton Herta stormed to his first pole position of 2021 |
Colton Herta picked up his fifth career pole position with a lap of 60.321 seconds around the streets of St. Petersburg. It is Herta's first career pole position on a street course. His father Bryan won pole position for the 2005 St. Petersburg race. This is the fourth track where both Hertas have a pole position joining Portland, Laguna Seca and Mid-Ohio. This is Andretti Autosport's first pole position at St. Petersburg since Tony Kanaan in 2008. Herta ended 2020 with an 11th-place finish at St. Petersburg and he started 2021 with a 22nd-place finish at Barber. He has not had three consecutive finishes outside the top ten finish since the eight-race stretch during his rookie year from Barber through Texas. The last time Herta started on pole position he won at Mid-Ohio, leading a 1-2-3 finish for Andretti Autosport. When his father started on pole position at St. Petersburg in 2005, Andretti ended up with a 1-2-3-4 finish and car #26 was the winner with Dan Wheldon.
Jack Harvey joins Herta on row one for the third time in his career. Harvey was 0.2499 seconds off Herta's pole-winning time. This is the 16th time he has started in the top ten in his IndyCar career. However, he has only finished better than his starting position twice when he has started in the top ten. Harvey will be making his fourth start St. Petersburg start this weekend. It joins the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the IMS road course and Mid-Ohio as the only tracks he has run four times in his IndyCar career. Harvey will make his 35th start this weekend and no driver has ever scored a first career victory in his or her 35th start.
Josef Newgarden makes his 150th start today from third on the grid. Fittingly, Newgarden is working on his third consecutive St. Petersburg victory. The only tracks he has won three races at are Barber and Iowa. Newgarden failed to complete a lap in a race for only the second time in his career at Barber. The other time was in Newgarden's third start at Long Beach, when contact with Dario Franchitti put him into the turn one tires.
Simon Pagenaud joins his Penske teammate Newgarden on row two. This is Pagenaud's best starting position since he started third in the 2020 season opener at Texas. This is his best starting position on a street course since his pole position at Toronto in 2019. Pagenaud has two podium finishes, four top five finishes and seven top ten finishes in nine St. Petersburg starts. This is only the third time Pagenaud has qualified in the top ten at St. Petersburg.
Sébastien Bourdais ended up fifth on the grid. Bourdais had not started in the top five on a street course since 2016 at Toronto, where he started fifth. Bourdais' last five IndyCar victories have come ninth or worse on the grid. The Frenchman still has not started on the front row for a road or street course since his pole position at Mid-Ohio in 2014.
Patricio O'Ward rounds out row three. O'Ward will make his 24th IndyCar start this weekend. No driver has ever scored a first career victory IndyCar in his or her 24th career start. O'Ward was second at St. Petersburg last year, one of three races where he had a runner-up finish in 2020. No driver has ever won at St. Petersburg from sixth on the grid.
Rinus VeeKay missed out on the Fast Six by 0.0473 seconds, but VeeKay will start seventh. The Dutchman was sixth at Barber, giving him his sixth career top ten finish. This will be VeeKay's 16th career start and 12 drivers have scored their first career victory in their 16th start. Those drivers include Tommy Milton, Ted Horn, Bill Holland, Troy Ruttman, Mario Andretti, Gordon Johncock, Mark Donohue, Danny Ongais, Emerson Fittipaldi and Uncle Jacques Villeneuve. The average start for a driver's first career victory is 17.6942.
Scott Dixon will start eighth. Of the 25 tracks Scott Dixon has won at in his IndyCar career, only five have been temporary circuits, Edmonton, Belle Isle, Toronto, Houston and Long Beach. He has picked ten of his 50 victories between those five temporary circuits. The only time Dixon has won from eighth on the grid was at Mid-Ohio in 2019. He has not led a lap at St. Petersburg since 2012 and the only other times he has led this race was in 2006 and 2010. Dixon has not led a lap in his last seven starts, his longest streak since the 2017 finale through the first six races of 2018. Chip Ganassi Racing has only one victory at St. Petersburg and it was ten years ago with Dario Franchitti.
Graham Rahal ended up ninth in qualifying. Rahal has not started in the top five at St. Petersburg since he picked up his first career pole position at the track in 2009. Last year, Rahal led two laps at St. Petersburg under caution. Those were his first laps led on the 1.8-mile street course since he took the checkered flag for his first career victory in a wet 2008 race. Rahal won that 2008 race from ninth on the grid with an Andretti Autosport car on pole position.
Álex Palou aims for his second consecutive victory from tenth on the grid. Palou could become the first driver to pick up his first two victories in consecutive races since A.J. Allmendinger in 2006 when Allmendinger had his first three victories come in successive races. Allmendinger won at Portland, Cleveland and Toronto. Palou has never won on a street course in his junior formula career. He was second in the second race at the 2018 Pau Grand Prix, behind current Super Formula driver Sacha Fenestraz and ahead of current Formula Two driver Marcus Armstrong. Current Haas F1 driver Mick Schumacher was tenth in that race.
Despite being one of the fastest cars throughout practice, Alexander Rossi ended up 11th in qualifying. The 61 laps Rossi led last year at St. Petersburg are his most laps led in a race he did not win. He has only led more laps in four other races, and he won all of those. Last year, St. Petersburg was one of only three races Rossi led in 2020, matching 2017 for his fewest races led in a season. His first career victory in the 100th Indianapolis 500 came from 11th on the grid, and it remains Rossi's only victory from a starting position outside the top three.
James Hinchcliffe makes it an all-Andretti row six. This is Hinchcliffe's worst starting position at St. Petersburg since 16th in 2015. He has won the second race of the season twice in his career, NOLA Motorsports Park in 2015 and Long Beach in 2017. Those are the only times Hinchcliffe has finished in the top five of the second race of the season.
Ryan Hunter-Reay missed out on advancing to round two by 0.0603 seconds and he will start 13th. Hunter-Reay is coming off his worst finish since his engine failure in the 2017 Indianapolis 500 left him 27th. Barber was the fourth time in his career he failed to complete a lap in a race and the first time since the second Road America race last year.
Scott McLaughlin starts where he finished last week in 14th. McLaughlin was 0.0523 seconds off advancing from the second group in round one. This is his third IndyCar start this weekend. That will tie him with Graham McRae and Matt Halliday for fourth-most starts among New Zealanders. McLaughlin has already surpassed McRae's best career finish of 16th and equaled Halliday's best finish of 14th.
Takuma Sato qualified 15th. Sato has finished in the top ten in the second race of the season the last two years after never scoring a top ten finish in the second race of his first nine seasons in IndyCar. Sato has finished outside the top twenty on four occasions in the second race of the year, but not since he was 22nd at NOLA Motorsports Park in 2015.
Marcus Ericsson ended 16th on the grid. Ericsson could do something that has only happened once in the history of Chip Ganassi Racing. A victory for the Swede would make the 2021 season only the second time Ganassi has produced multiple first-time winners in one season. The only other time the team did that was in 1996 with Jimmy Vasser and Alex Zanardi. Vasser won four races that season and took the championship. Zanardi won three races and was third in the championship.
Felix Rosenqvist starts 17th. This is the second time he has failed to make it to the second round of qualifying on a street course. The other time was last year at St. Petersburg when Rosenqvist started 22nd. He has finished outside the top ten in ten of the last 15 races. In 2019, Rosenqvist was in the top five of three of five street course races and he had four top ten finishes in those five races.
Romain Grosjean will start on the outside of row nine. Last year was the first time in four seasons Dale Coyne Racing did not have a top ten finisher at St. Petersburg. Coyne has three podium finishes at St. Petersburg. The only track where the team has had more podium results is Belle Isle with four.
Conor Daly rolls off from 19th. Daly has not had a top ten finish in his last eight street course starts. His last top ten finish on a street course was sixth in the second Belle Isle race in 2016. All three of his top ten finishes on street courses have come at Belle Isle. His best St. Petersburg finish was 13th in 2016.
Will Power will start a career-worst 20th at St. Petersburg. Power had qualified on the front row 11 times in 13 St. Petersburg appearances. His previous worst start at St. Petersburg was sixth. This is his worst start on any street course since 23rd for the first Toronto race in 2014. Power has not opened the season with consecutive podium finishes since 2011 when he was second at St. Petersburg and then won at Barber. The only other two times he opened the season with consecutive podium finishes were in 2007, a victory in Las Vegas and third at Long Beach, and in 2010 where he won both São Paulo and St. Petersburg. He won twice from outside the top ten and both were on street courses, Long Beach 2012 from 12th and Belle Isle I 2014 from 16th.
Ed Jones ended up 21st on the grid. Jones has never started better than 15th in this race. This is one of three tracks where he has multiple top ten finishes. He was tenth and eighth in his first two St. Petersburg starts. The only other tracks he has multiple top ten finishes are Long Beach and Belle Isle.
Max Chilton joins his former Carlin Indy Lights teammate on row eleven. This is Chilton's third consecutive start outside the top twenty at St. Petersburg. Chilton turned 30 years old on Wednesday and he will make his 73rd IndyCar start this weekend. The only driver to score a first career victory in the 73rd start of a career was Roberto Moreno at Cleveland in 2000.
Jimmie Johnson is set for the first street race of his IndyCar career and his first St. Petersburg start will come from 23rd. He will join Stanton Barrett, Patrick Carpentier, Dario Franchitti, Sam Hornish, Jr., Juan Pablo Montoya, Danica Patrick and Scott Sharp as drivers with a NASCAR Cup start and an IndyCar start at St. Petersburg. Only Barrett, Montoya and Sharp had made a Cup start prior to their first St. Petersburg start.
Dalton Kellett rounds out the grid in 24th. Kellett is coming off the best finish of his IndyCar career, as he was 18th at Barber, but that lead lap finish remains missing from his page in the record book. He made 16 starts at St. Petersburg in the Road to Indy.
NBC's coverage of the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg begins at noon ET with green flag scheduled for 12:42 p.m. ET. The race is scheduled for 100 laps.
