Scott McLaughlin won his second career pole position after running a lap of 74.5555 seconds in the final round of Saturday qualifying for the Music City Grand Prix on the streets of Nashville. McLaughlin has now won 61 pole positions while driving for the Team Penske organization, the most for the famed team. He entered the weekend tied with Hélio Castroneves for most pole positions for Team Penske. This is the third time in five street course races this season a Team Penske entry has won pole position. This is Team Penske's sixth pole position in 2022. Each time McLaughlin has started on the front row in his IndyCar career he has either finished first or second. He is looking for three consecutive top five finishes for the first time in his IndyCar career. He was third and fourth over the last two races. His St. Petersburg victory to start this season remains his only top five finish to date on a street course in his brief IndyCar career.
Romain Grosjean joins McLaughlin on row one after falling 0.1420 seconds off the New Zealander's fastest lap. This is Grosjean's best starting position of the season and the first time he has qualified in the top five since starting fifth in the St. Petersburg season opener. He has finished outside the top fifteen in the last two street course races after finishing in the top five of the first two street course races of the season. Dating back to last year, he has finished outside the top fifteen in six of nine street races.
Christian Lundgaard has the best starting position of his IndyCar career after he was 0.1594 seconds off McLaughlin, putting Lundgaard third on the grid. Lundgaard was on the podium for the first time in his IndyCar career last week at the IMS road course. Lundgaard could become the first driver to score his first career victory after finishing second in the race prior since Robert Doornbos in 2007. Doornbos was runner-up at Cleveland and then won at Mont-Tremblant.
Álex Palou qualified fourth, over a third of a second slower than McLaughlin in the final round of qualifying. It is the first time Palou will start in the top five since Road America. Palou has not had a top five finish in his last four starts. Since joining Chip Ganassi Racing at the start of the 2021 season, Palou has never gone five races without a top five finish. He has two podium finishes on street courses this season and his worst street course result is sixth.
Patricio O'Ward has the #5 Chevrolet fifth on the grid. O'Ward has started in the top ten in ten of the last 11 races with eight of those being top five starts. In this 11-race period, he has two victories, four podium finishes and five top five finishes, but he has finished outside the top fifteen in three of those races. O'Ward was as high as second in the championship during this 11-race span, but he is now fifth, exactly where he was when it started at Barber Motorsports Park.
Josef Newgarden was the top American qualifier in sixth position, and six different nationalities are represented in the top six starters. Newgarden is shooting for his fifth victory of the season in his home race here in Nashville. Newgarden has never won five races in an IndyCar season. He would be the first driver with five victories in a season since Simon Pagenaud in 2016. Pagenaud won the championship that year.
David Malukas ended up seventh on the grid, 0.0243 seconds shy of making the Fast Six. Malukas has been the top Dale Coyne Racing finisher in five consecutive races and now holds the edge in the intra-team battle eight to five over Takuma Sato. This is the sixth time in the last seven races Malukas has qualified ahead of Sato, and now Malukas and Sato are level with each having been the top Dale Coyne Racing qualifier in seven races.
Will Power caused a local yellow in round two of qualifying and Power lost his fastest lap, knocking him from advancing to the final round to eighth on the gird. Power enters Nashville with three consecutive podium finishes for the first time since 2018 when he finished third, second and first over the Mid-Ohio, Pocono and Gateway races. The last time he had at least four consecutive podium finishes was 2016 when Power had a six-race stretch of podium results from the second Belle Isle race through Pocono. If Power wins this weekend, it will be the first time he has won multiple street course races in a season since 2014 when he won at St. Petersburg and Belle Isle. That season Power went on to win the championship.
Graham Rahal qualified ninth, matching his best starting position of the season. Rahal started ninth at Barber Motorsports Park, his only other top ten starting position this season. He has finished in the top ten of three of four street course races, with his early retirement at Belle Isle being the lone blemish in street races in 2022. However, Rahal has not had a podium finish on a street course since his most recent victory in the second Belle Isle race in 2017.
Rinus VeeKay rounds out the top ten on the grid. VeeKay announced prior to the weekend he had signed a multi-year extension to remain with Ed Carpenter Racing. He is the only driver to have completed three full seasons with ECR. His sixth-place finish at the St. Petersburg season opener is ECR's only top ten finish on a street course this season.
Jack Harvey made it to the second round of qualifying for the second time this season and Harvey starts 11th. He has yet to be the top Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing finisher this season. Harvey has been the worst RLLR finisher in five of the last six races and in eight of 14 races. He has finished outside the top fifteen in five connectives races. His longest slump outside the top fifteen was a seven-race stretch last season from the second Texas race through Mid-Ohio. That drought ended at Nashville.
Dalton Kellett benefitted from Colton Herta bringing out a red flag in the first qualifying group, and Herta's loss of lap time lifted Kellett into the second round of qualifying for the first time in his career. Kellett starts 12th, a career best for him in IndyCar. He started 19th and finished 23rd in last year's Nashville race. This is the fourth time Kellett has started in the top twenty in his IndyCar career. Along with these two Nashville races, he started 20th in the second Mid-Ohio race in 2020 and he started 14th for this season's St. Petersburg race.
Simon Pagenaud missed out on advancing from group one and he will start 13th. Pagenaud has finished outside the top twenty in three consecutive races. Pagenaud has finished in the top ten in the 14th race of the season in nine of 12 seasons he has contested the 14th race. In the 14th race of the season, he has four podium finishes and six top five finishes, but he has never won the 14th race of the season.
Scott Dixon missed advancing from group two, falling 0.0796 seconds short in the first round. Dixon has not had multiple street course victories in a season since 2018 when he won at Belle Isle and Toronto. Dixon won his fifth championship that year. The only other season Dixon won multiple street course races was 2013, when he swept the Toronto doubleheader and won at Houston on his way to his third IndyCar title.
Felix Rosenqvist will start 15th, his worst starting position since 25th at Belle Isle. Rosenqvist has not led a lap on a street course since his IndyCar debut at St. Petersburg in 2019. He led 31 laps that day and it remains the most laps Rosenqvist has led in his IndyCar career. He has only led double-figure laps in four races, and he has not led more than 15 in the other three occasions.
Kyle Kirkwood was just over two-tenths from advancing from round two and he will start 16th. Kirkwood's average finish on street courses this season is 18.5, which is about 2.5 spots better than Kirkwood's average finish over the entire season. This is the sixth time in seven races Kirkwood has started outside the top fifteen, and he has finished off the lead lap in five consecutive races.
Alexander Rossi was caught out when his teammate Herta got into the turn five tire barrier, slotting Rossi into the 17th grid position. Rossi is fresh off his first victory of the season and first victory in over three years. The only time Rossi has won consecutive races in his IndyCar career were at Mid-Ohio and Pocono in 2018. That year, Mid-Ohio and Pocono were the 13th and 14th races of the season respectively. This year, the Brickyard weekend race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course and Nashville are the 13th and 14th races of the season.
Marcus Ericsson qualified outside the top fifteen for the second consecutive race and Ericsson will start 18th, the same position he won from last year at Nashville. He has finished behind Will Power in three consecutive races and in nine of 13 races this season. The races in which Ericsson has finished ahead of Power are Texas, the Indianapolis 500, Road America and Toronto.
Callum Ilott starts on row ten. Ilott had his best street course finish in his brief IndyCar career at Toronto last month when he finished 14th after starting seventh. He has finished in the top fifteen in four consecutive races after having only two top fifteen finishes in the first 11 career starts.
Takuma Sato rounds out the top twenty on the grid. Sato has not led a lap on a street course since lap 18 of the 2019 Toronto race. Sato also led lap 29 at Long Beach earlier that season. He has not led multiple laps in a street race since he started on pole position for the second race of the 2017 Belle Isle doubleheader. Sato led 22 laps in that Belle Isle race before finishing fourth.
Simona de Silvestro did not complete a qualifying lap in group one after she brushed a barrier and damaged a toe link, but she will start 21st after all the penalties were applied from qualifying. De Silvestro makes her first street course start in IndyCar since the 2015 season opener at St. Petersburg, where she finished 18th driving for Andretti Autosport. She has four top ten finishes in her last six IndyCar street course starts dating back to the first race of the 2013 Toronto doubleheader. That six-race stretch includes her fifth-place finish at Baltimore and her runner-up finish in the first race of the Houston doubleheader to Scott Dixon.
Conor Daly joins de Silvestro on row 11 in the #20 Chevrolet. Daly has finished outside the top fifteen in four consecutive races, his worst stretch since a seven-race stretch that spanned the final two races of 2020 and first five races of 2021. He has finished at least seven spots worse than his starting position in the last three races. The good news is Daly can only finish at worst four spots down from his starting spot today.
Colton Herta brought out a red flag after getting into the turn five tires late in the first qualifying group and he will start 23rd, his worst starting position ever on a street course. Herta led 39 laps in last year's Nashville race. That is the eighth most laps Herta has led in an IndyCar race. In six of the seven races where he has led more laps, Herta has won the race. The only other exception is last year at Gateway, where Herta led 101 laps, the most he has ever led in a race, but he retired when he had a driveshaft failure while leading.
Devlin DeFrancesco also brought out a red flag in the first qualifying group and he will start 24th. DeFrancesco has eight consecutive finishes inside the top twenty after starting the season with only one finish in the top twenty through the first five races. He has not been the worst Andretti Autosport finisher in a race since Road America when he was 20th.
Jimmie Johnson takes 25th position on the grid. Johnson was parked in last year's Nashville race due to his car being worked out without IndyCar approval under red flag conditions. Johnson was one of two cars parked in last year's race. Cody Ware was parked ten laps from the finish after Ware was unable to maintain a safe speed competing on the track.
Hélio Castroneves has a six-spot grid penalty for an unapproved engine chance and Castroneves drops to 26th, though he was only set to start 24th prior to the penalty. His best street course finish this season was ninth at Long Beach. Castroneves' most recent top five finish in a street race was second at Toronto in 2016. He has made 11 street course starts since that last top five finish.
NBC's coverage of the Big Machine Record Music City Grand Prix will begin at 3:00 p.m. ET with green flag scheduled for 3:15 p.m. ET. The race is scheduled for 80 laps.
