Will Power is the new all-time leader in IndyCar pole positions after a lap of 71.6127 seconds around Laguna Seca on Saturday earned him the top spot on the grid for the 2022 season finale. Power's 68th pole position is his first at Laguna Seca, the 26th different track Power has earned the top grid position. Power enters the weekend with 18 victories from pole position, tied with Sébastien Bourdais for third most all-time. Mario Andretti holds that record with 24 victories from pole position and A.J. Foyt is second with 23. Regardless of whether or not Will Power wins the championship, he is guaranteed a top five championship finish. It will be his 12th top five championship finish in the last 13 seasons. He currently has eight podium finishes. His most in as season was nine in the 2010 and 2011 seasons.
Callum Ilott will end his rookie season with his best starting position of the season, second after Ilott fell 0.0193 seconds shy of Power's top time. Ilott is the 26th different driver to start second next to Power on a front row. Ilott has an average finish of 13.714 over the last seven races. Ilott had an average finish of 19.75 in his first eight starts of the season. The last time a first-time winner occurred in a season finale was Ed Carpenter at Kentucky in 2011.
Alexander Rossi will lead an all-Andretti Autosport row two. Rossi was 0.1571 seconds off Power's time. This will be Alexander Rossi's 114th start with Andretti Autosport. He has eight victories, 28 poidum finishes, 40 top five finishes and 68 top ten finishes with the team. Rossi started his Andretti Autosport career starting 18th for the 2016 St. Petersburg race. The only time Rossi has won from third starting position was at Pocono in 2018. Six of Rossi's eight career victories have come from the front row. The two that didn't come from the front row were his victory in the Indianapolis 500, where he started 11th, and that 500-mile Pocono race.
Romain Grosjean joins Rossi on row two, and 0.1731 seconds covered the top four qualifiers in the Fast Six. This was only the fourth time Grosjean has made the Fast Six this season and it was the first time he made it on road course. His three previous appearances were on street courses. Grosjean was the top Andretti Autosport finisher in four of the first 16 races, but he has not been the top Andretti finisher since the second race of the Iowa doubleheader.
Patricio O'Ward moves up to fifth on the grid after Álex Palou changed his engine after qualifying, leading to a six-spot grid penalty for Palou. O'Ward is aiming for his third consecutive top five finishes. He has not had three consecutive top five finishes since last season between the Indianapolis 500 and the Belle Isle doubleheader. The only other time he had three consecutive top five finishes was between the final two races of 2020 and the 2021 season opener.
David Malukas inherits sixth position, but Malukas missed out on the final round of qualifying by 0.0080 seconds. This is the seventh time the rookie has started in the top ten this season and his third top ten start in the last four races. Malukas was fourth and second in the Indy Lights races held last year at Laguna Seca.
Scott McLaughlin missed out on the final round of qualifying by 0.0701 seconds and McLaughlin will start seventh. He enters Laguna Seca with five consecutive top five finishes and three consecutive podium finishes. The only other driver with three consecutive podium finishes this seaosn was Will Power between the Iowa doubleheader and the July Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course race. No driver has four consecutive podium finishes this season.
Felix Rosenqvist takes eighth on the grid for the season finale. It is Rosenqvist's 12th top ten starting position of the season. With this qualifying result, Rosenqvist has the sixth best average starting position this season, but he has only the 11th best average finishing position. He has finished better than his starting position in eight races, but four of those are the four races he started outside the top ten, three of which were starts outside the top twenty.
Marcus Ericsson caused a local yellow for a spin in the Corkscrew during the second round of qualifying, but he will start ninth after his teammate Palou's penalty. Ericsson is 40 points behind Power after Power's pole position. Ericsson has won two championships in his car racing career. The first was the 2007 Formula BMW UK championship. His second championship was the 2009 Japanese Formula Three Championship. Ericsson has not won on a natural-terrain road course since the GP2 feature race at the Nürburgring on July 6, 2013.
Simon Pagenaud takes tenth on the grid, his best starting position since he was sixth at Mid-Ohio. Pagenaud has been running at the finish of 15 of 16 races this season. He has not had multiple retirements in one season since 2015 when he had two. The only other season where he had multiple retirements was 2013, when he had two. Pagenaud has 186 finishes in 198 starts, a finishing percentage of 93.939% and he has finished on the lead lap in 161 of his first 198 starts, a rate of 81.313%.
Álex Palou takes 11th on the grid after serving the penalty for the engine change. Palou was about to start in the top five for the ninth time this season. Palou was 0.5498 seconds off Power's pole position time. The Spaniard could become the first defending champion to go winless since Scott Dixon in 2004. The most recent driver to score a first victory of the season in the season finale was Tony Kanaan at Fontana in 2014.
Hélio Castroneves made the second round of qualifying for the second time this season and Castroneves rounds out the top twelve. Castroneves won at Laguna Seca in 2020 in IMSA competition with co-driver Ricky Taylor. He also won the 2000 CART race at Laguna Seca. It is Team Penske's most recent Laguna Seca victory in IndyCar.
Scott Dixon missed out on the second round of qualifying by 0.0863 seconds and Dixon will start 13th. Dixon has finished third in the season finale the last three years, and he has finished on the podium in the last four season finales. He has 13 podium finishes in the last 16 season finales. He has three top ten finishes in four Laguna Seca starts. Last year was the first time Dixon finished outside the top ten at the track when he wound up 13th after contact with Takuma Sato when Sato spun in the corkscrew. Dixon won the 2000 Indy Lights race at Laguna Seca on his way to winning the championship that season. Dixon has started 13th nine times in his IndyCar career before this race. His best finish from 13th starting position is fourth.
Rinus VeeKay was 0.0452 seconds short of advancing from group two and VeeKay will start 14th. The Dutchman swept the Indy Lights races at Laguna Seca in 2019. The only drivers to have won at Laguna Seca in IndyCar and Indy Lights are Bryan Herta and Cristiano da Matta. Jimmy Vasser and Patrick Carpentier won at Laguna Seca in IndyCar and the Atlantics Championship.
Conor Daly finds himself 15th on the grid. Daly has finished off the lead lap in five of the last six races. He opened the season with ten consecutive lead lap finishes. This will be Daly's 97th career start this weekend. The only drivers with more starts before a first career victory are Michel Jourdain, Jr. at 129 starts, George Snider at 126 starts and Daly's car owner Ed Carpenter at 113 starts.
Christian Lundgaard is the top Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing starter in 16th. This is the fifth time RLLR did not have a top fifteen starter in a race this season. Lundgaard has finished outside the top fifteen in the last two races. His only other time finishing outside the top fifteen in consecutive races was 19th and 18th at Texas and Long Beach earlier this season.
Kyle Kirkwood will start 17th for the final race of the season. This is the eighth consecutive race Kirkwood has qualified outside the top ten. He won three of his four Road to Indy starts at Laguna Seca, which included a sweep of the Indy Lights races last year. Kirkwood was 13th last week at Portland, only his third top fifteen finish this season.
Colton Herta is looking for his second consecutive victory in the season finale and third finale victory in four years, but it will have to come from 18th starting position. Herta would be the first driver to win consecutive season finales since Simon Pagenaud in 2016 and 2017. American drivers have won the last four season finales.
Graham Rahal ended up in 19th starting position. This is the tenth time Rahal has qualified outside the top fifteen this season. He has finished outside the top ten in nine of 16 season finales. He was runner-up in the 2016 season finale at Sonoma. His only other top five finish in a season finale was in his rookie season when Rahal was fourth at Mexico City in 2007.
Devlin DeFrancesco qualified 20th. DeFrancesco is coming off his best career finish on a road/street course after finishing 16th at Portland. Combined with his 12th at Gateway, DeFrancesco's best two finishes have occurred in the last two races.
Jack Harvey starts directly behind his Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing teammate Rahal in 21st position. Harvey has finished outside the top fifteen in four of the last five season finales. He was seventh last year in the Long Beach season finale. Harvey was 19th and 15th in his first two Laguna Seca starts.
Former Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing driver Takuma Sato takes the outside of row 11. Sato's average starting position for the 2022 season will be 14.706, his third worst in 13 IndyCar season. Only 2012 and 2021 had worse averages. Sato has never finished in the top five of a season finale. He has five top ten finishes in 12 season finales.
Jimmie Johnson will start 23rd for the second consecutive race and for the third time in the final five races. Johnson has retired due to an accident in three of the last four road/street course races. He had a spun during the first practice on Friday in turn six.
Dalton Kellett joins Johnson on row 12. This is the 15th time this season Kellett will start outside the top twenty. He has finished outside the top twenty in ten of 11 road/street course races this season. His best road/street course result was 20th at Belle Isle.
After causing a red flag in qualifying for an accident in the Corkscrew, Josef Newgarden will start 25th for the Laguna Seca season finale. This is Newgarden's worst starting position since he started 25th for the 2016 Grand Prix of Indianapolis. The worst starting position for a Laguna Seca winner is 25th with Max Papis in 2001. However, 22 of 24 Laguna Seca races have been won from a top-three starting position. Newgarden entered this weekend second in the championship. He could become the first driver with three consecutive runner-up finishes in the championship since Will Power did it from 2010 to 2012.
Simona de Silvestro rounds out the grid in 26th position. De Silvestro competed at Laguna Seca in the Atlantics Championship. She was tenth in both races, first in 2008 and then in 2009. She was leading the championship entering the 2009 Laguna Seca race, which served as the season finale. Contact in the Corkscrew took de Silvestro out of the race, and she lost the championship to current Team RLL BMW driver John Edwards, and past Team RLL BMW driver Jonathan Summerton took second in the championship ahead of de Silvestro.
NBC's coverage of the Firestone Grand Prix of Monterey begins at 3:00 p.m. ET with green flag scheduled for 3:30 p.m. ET. The race is scheduled for 95 laps.
