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| Josef Newgarden aims for Team Penske's first victory of 2021 |
Josef Newgarden picked up his 13th IndyCar pole position with a lap of 1:46.019 in Saturday's Fast Six session from Road America. Newgarden took pole position on the primary tires, a bold strategy call counter to the rest of his competitors. It is Newgarden's third pole position at Road America, his most pole positions at a single track. He has won three races from pole position in his career, including his only Road America victory in 2018. Newgarden has the most laps led at Road America since IndyCar returned in 2016 as he has led 91 laps. Newgarden is one of two drivers with at least five top ten finishes from the last six Road America races. Newgarden is one of two drivers to have completed all 325 laps run at Road America since IndyCar returned in 2016. The other is his teammate Simon Pagenaud.
Colton Herta will start on the front row for the third time in four Road America starts, as Herta was 0.243 seconds off Newgarden in the final round of qualifying. Herta has not finished worse than eighth in three Road America starts. Herta has finished in the top five in seven of nine front row starts in his IndyCar career. He has eighth top ten finishes in nine front row starts. The one blemish was his 16th-place finish in this year's Indianapolis 500 after he started second. Despite two front row starts prior at this 4.048-mile road course, Herta has never led a lap at this track.
Jack Harvey qualified in the top five for the third time this season and he will roll off from third position. This is his 11th top five starting position in 42 IndyCar starts. Harvey's best Road America finish is 15th, which came in 2019. Last year, he started on the front row in race one, but a brakes failure took him out of the race. He suffered contact at the start of race two and that sent him backward from a ninth place starting spot. Harvey had to settle for 17th.
Will Power broke a bad trend with his fourth-place qualifying effort. In the previous five races that have had qualifying, Power had started outside the top five in all of them, outside the top ten in four of them and outside the top fifteen in three of them. He started outside the top ten in only two races in all of 2020. Power has won from fourth starting position four times in his IndyCar career, most recently at Gateway in 2018.
Álex Palou returns to the track of his first podium finish and Palou will start fifth. He was third last year in race one, the third start of his IndyCar career. He followed up that third-place finish with a seventh-place result. Road America is one of three tracks Palou has multiple top ten finishes at. The others are the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course and Texas.
Simon Pagenaud will be making his 175th IndyCar start this weekend from sixth on the grid. He will be the 38th driver to reach this milestone and he is the second Frenchman to reach it. Sébastien Bourdais has made 216 starts, the 26th most in IndyCar history. Pagenaud's best finish in a quarter-century milestone start is fifth, which was in his 150th start at Gateway in 2019.
Romain Grosjean will be making his sixth IndyCar start from seventh on the grid. Grosjean missed out on the Fast Six by 0.0445 seconds to Pagenaud. Grosjean will look to bounce back from his toughest weekend in IndyCar after Grosjean finished 23rd and 24th at Belle Isle. It was the first time Grosjean was the worst finishing Dale Coyne Racing driver.
Ryan Hunter-Reay qualified eighth, only his third top ten start of the season. Hunter-Reay has four top five finishes in eight Road America races. Since IndyCar returned to Road America in 2016, Hunter-Reay has alternated with a top five finish in each of his odd-numbered Road America start and finishing outside the top ten in his even-numbered start. He was taken out in turn one of the last Road America race, ending up 22nd, his worst finish at the track.
Alexander Rossi takes the ninth spot on the grid. This is the location of Rossi's most recent IndyCar victory. In the 29 races since that victory, Rossi has seven podium finishes, eight top five finishes, 16 top ten finishes and he has led 84 laps. Rossi has only two top ten finishes at Road America, his victory and third last year in race two. The only time Rossi has won from outside a top three starting position was his Indianapolis 500 victory in 2016, when he started 11th.
Championship lead Patricio O'Ward ended up tenth in qualifying. O'Ward could become the first driver to three victories this season. Five of the last six drivers to be the first to three victories have won the championship. A third victory would move O'Ward up to second all-time among Mexican drivers in victories. Only Adrián Fernández has more than three with 11 victories. Only once did Fernández have at least three victories in a season. That was 2004, his final full season when he won at Kentucky, Chicagoland and Fontana.
Sébastien Bourdais ended up 11th in qualifying. Since finishing on the podium of his first four Road America starts, Sébastien Bourdais has finished outside the top ten in his last three trips to the track. His best finish was 12th in 2019. He led 92 of his first 186 laps around the track. He has led zero of his last 159 laps.
This is the third consecutive race Ed Jones made it out of the first round of qualifying, as Jones will start 12th today. He has started on row six for all four of his Road America starts. Jones has top ten finishes in three Road America starts. He was seventh and ninth in 2017 and 2018 respectively.
Scott Dixon missed out on advancing from round one by 0.03241. This is Dixon's worst starting position at Road America. Dixon scored his second Road America victory last year in race one and he has four top five finishes in the six Road America races since 2016. A third Road America victory would tie Dixon with Mario Andretti, Emerson Fittipaldi and Michael Andretti for most at the track. A victory for Dixon would match the worst starting position for a Road America winner, tying Alex Tagliani's mark from 2004. It would also be the first time IndyCar had three consecutive winners from starting outside the top ten since Toronto, Fontana and Milwaukee in 2013.
For the first time in Graham Rahal's IndyCar career, he will start outside the top ten at Road America, as Rahal starts 14th for today's race. He had seven consecutive top ten starts here. Last year, Graham Rahal suffered his worst Road America finish when he was spun off course on the opening lap and was classified in 23rd. Prior to that he had finished no worse than eighth in his first six Road America starts.
Conor Daly leads an Ed Carpenter Racing sweep of row eight with Oliver Askew to his outside. Daly has an average finish of 18.75 in four Road America starts. His best finish was 15th in 2017. He has retired from two of his four races, and he had started 19th or worse in his last three Road America races .
Oliver Askew will make his first start with Ed Carpenter Racing in place of Rinus VeeKay from 16th. Ed Carpenter Racing's best Road America finish is eighth. Josef Newgarden did it in 2016 and Spencer Pigot did it in 2018. Askew was 15th and 21st in the Road America races last year.
Scott McLaughlin will start 17th, matching his old Supercars number. McLaughlin has been the third-best Penske finisher in five of eight races this season. He has been the worst Team Penske finisher in two races. One of those was his 11th at St. Petersburg. The other was the second Belle Isle race. He was the top Penske finisher with his runner-up result in the first Texas race.
Marcus Ericsson qualified 18th, his third consecutive start outside the top ten. Ericsson has started in the top ten of only nine of his 38 IndyCar starts and his only top five start was fourth for the first Gateway race last year. In the nine races he has started in the top ten, Ericsson has finished in top ten only four times.
James Hinchcliffe's top ten drought is up to 11 races and Hinchcliffe will have some work to do from 19th on the grid. This is the fifth time Hinchcliffe has started 19th in his IndyCar career. His best finish from 19th was 11th at the Grand Prix of Indianapolis last year. He has finished in the top ten of his last two Road America starts.
Takuma Sato matched his worst Road America starting position of 20th. Sato has four consecutive top ten finishes at Road America. He has completed 324 of 325 laps in his six Road America starts. His best finish in the ninth race of a season is seventh, which has happened twice, first at Milwaukee in 2013 and then at Texas in 2018.
Kevin Magnussen makes his IndyCar debut from 21st. Magnussen will become the third Danish driver to make an IndyCar start and the first since Ronnie Bremer ran the 2005 Champ Car season finale at Mexico City. Bremer is responsible for Denmark's best IndyCar finish, a sixth at Edmonton earlier in that 2005 season. Kevin's father Jan was the first Dane to start an IndyCar race. Jan's best finishes seventh at Vancouver in 1999 and Jan started 21st in that race.
Max Chilton qualified 22nd. Chilton has one top ten finish at Road America, a ninth in 2017. In his other five Road America starts, his best finish was 15th in last year's second race. He has finished on the lead lap in the last five Road America races. Chilton has not finished on the lead lap this season and he has finished outside the top twenty in his last four starts.
Jimmie Johnson has yet to start in the top twenty in his IndyCar career and he will start 23rd at Road America. This will be the first time Johnson has raced in Wisconsin since Sunday July 1, 2001, when Johnson ran in the NASCAR Busch Series at the Milwaukee Mile. Johnson ended up 26th, six laps down in the #92 Herzog Motorsports Chevrolet. Greg Biffle won that race. One other notable competitor was the 23rd-place finisher, current A.J. Foyt Racing president Larry Foyt
Dalton Kellett qualified 24th. Kellett ran two identical races last year in the Road America doubleheader. He started 23rd and finished 20th, one lap down, in each race.
Cody Ware will make his IndyCar debut from 26th on the grid. Ware will become the first North Carolina-born driver to make an IndyCar start since Randy Lewis ran the 1991 CART season finale at Laguna Seca. Lewis drove for Dale Coyne Racing that day and finished 26th after retiring 11 laps in because of a brakes issue. Only one North Carolinian has won an IndyCar race. Jim Packard won at Springfield on August 20, 1960.
NBCSN's coverage of the REV Group Grand Prix at Road America begins at 12:00 p.m. ET with green flag scheduled for 12:40 p.m. ET. The race is scheduled for 55 laps.
