Colton Herta scored his first pole position of the season and the 15th pole position of his IndyCar career, as Herta ran a lap of 60.477 seconds in the final round of qualifying for the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix. It is Herta's second consecutive pole position at Detroit. Last year, he led the first 33 laps before cautions shuffled him down the order and he ran into the tire barrier while in the middle of the pack. Herta ended a lap down in 19th. After finishes of 25th and 14th in the two races from Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Herta is looking to avoid three consecutive results outside the top ten for the first time since 2022 between the Iowa doubleheader and the summer IMS road course race.
David Malukas starts second for the third time in his career, as Malukas was 0.1713 seconds off Herta's time for pole position. Malukas started second at Gateway and Milwaukee last year. His previous best start on a street course was fifth. At the Indianapolis 500, Malukas matched his career-best finish of second. Only twice has he had consecutive top ten finishes in his career. The first time were the first two races of 2023 at St. Petersburg and Texas. The next time was at Gateway and Portland later that season.
Kyle Kirkwood ended up 0.2533 seconds shy of his Andretti Global teammate Herta, and Kirkwood will start third. After the penalties from the Indianapolis 500, Kirkwood heads to Detroit coming off the worst result of his career in 32nd. Kirkwood has finished in the top five of four consecutive street races, and he has seven consecutive top ten finishes in street races. He has finished sixth and fourth in the last two Detroit races.
Christian Lundgaard will take the outside of row two for the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix in fourth. The Arrow McLaren driver was 0.4159 off pole position. Lundgaard is coming of his best finish on an oval after he was classified in seventh for the Indianapolis 500. He has five top ten finishes from the first six races. Prior to this season, his most top ten finishes from the first six races was three. He has finished 6th and 11th in the two races held on this circuit.
After Graham Rahal serves a six-spot grid penalty, Álex Palou moves up to fifth as Palou 0.9901 seconds slower than Herta in the final round of qualifying. Palou has not started worse than eighth this season, and this is his sixth consecutive race starting on one of the first three rows. Palou has finished on the podium in six consecutive races, the longest streak of his career. The last time a driver had seven consecutive podium finishes was Hélio Castroneves in the final seven races of the 2008 season.
The Rahal penalty moves Rinus VeeKay to the third row. This was the third time this season VeeKay has made the second round of qualifying, and he does it with Mike Cannon as his lead engineer. Cannon re-joined Dale Coyne Racing earlier this week. Cannon had been signed with Prema this winter before leaving the team in January. VeeKay was 0.0256 seconds from advancing to the final round. VeeKay was second in his first Belle Isle start in 2021. Since then, VeeKay has not finished better than 14th in his last four Detroit starts.
Scott McLaughlin is the top Team Penske driver on the grid in seventh. This is McLaughlin's sixth time starting inside the top ten this season. In five starts between Belle Isle and this Detroit street course, McLaughlin has finished 19th or 20th four times. He was seventh in the 2023 Detroit Grand Prix. He has not finished on the podium in a street race since he was second at Nashville in 2023.
Will Power makes it an all-Team Penske row four. In the last eight seasons, Power has only one street course victory. That was the final Belle Isle race in 2022. There have been 37 street course races since the start of the 2017 season. Power has won from eighth on the grid twice before in his career. Both came in 2016, first at Belle Isle and then at Pocono.
Marcus Armstrong moves up to ninth starting position after Rahal's penalty, as well as a six-spot grid penalty to Scott Dixon, who initially qualified tenth. Armstrong has made it to the second round of qualifying in five races this season, but he has yet to finish better than seventh. He went from 19th to third last year at Detroit, his first career podium finish. Armstrong has led a lap in four of the first six races this season.
Christian Rasmussen takes tenth on the grid, his best starting position since he started eighth at Mid-Ohio last July. Rasmussen wound up finishing ninth in that Mid-Ohio race, his first top ten finish in IndyCar. Rasmussen is coming off a career-best result of sixth in the Indianapolis 500. It was his second career top ten result. Rasmussen was the only driver to fail to finish in last year's Detroit race.
A six-spot grid penalty for an unapproved engine change at the Indianapolis 500 knocks Graham Rahal from fifth on the grid to 11th, but this was the first time Rahal made the Fast Six on a street course since Long Beach 2019. Including Belle Isle, Rahal's average finish in the last three Detroit Grand Prix is 22nd. Rahal has not had a top five finish on a street course since he was fifth at Toronto in 2022.
Marcus Ericsson missed out on the second round by 0.0102 seconds, but he will start 12th after Scott Dixon's six-spot grid penalty from tenth on the grid. Three of Ericsson's 11 podium finishes have come in Detroit, Michigan. Two of those were at Belle Isle with the other on this course last season. The only track were Ericsson has finished in a podium position in consecutive years is Indianapolis 500 where he was second in 2023 the year after he won the race in 2022.
Louis Foster fell 0.0081 seconds shy of making it through group two, and this places the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing driver 13th. Foster has started better than 14th in four of seven races this season. The Briton has finished 11th and 12th in the last two races after he did not finish in the top fifteen of the first four races of the season.
Felix Rosenqvist was 0.0435 seconds from advancing out of group one. Instead, Rosenqvist starts 14th, matching his worst starting spot of the season. Rosenqvist has three top five finishes from the first six races. Only twice in his career has he had at least four top five finishes in a season. The Swede had six top five finishes in 2019 and four in 2023.
Alexander Rossi starts on the inside of row eight. This is Rossi's worst starting position since he qualified 20th for St. Petersburg in March. Rossi has gone 14 races without a top five finish, the longest slump of his career. His previous worst was a ten-race streak from the 2020 St. Petersburg finale through the first nine races of the 2021 season.
Scott Dixon has a six-spot grid penalty after taking his fifth engine of the season, and this will drop Dixon from tenth on the grid to 16th. It has been one year since Dixon's most recent victory, which came at Detroit last year. A record eight of his 58 career victories have come from a starting position outside the top ten. The last time Dixon won a track in consecutive years was at Texas in 2020 and in 2021.
Callum Ilott takes 17th on the grid, just under a tenth of a second from making it to round two, but this is the second time Ilott has started inside the top twenty this season. He started 16th at Barber Motorsports Park. After his disqualification from the Indianapolis 500, Ilott has been classified outside the top twenty in five consecutive races. Among the drivers to start all six races this season, Ilott is last on points with 45, 18 points behind the next closest driver.
Patricio O'Ward finds himself in 18th, ending a streak of five consecutive races starting in the top ten. This is the fifth time in the last six street races O'Ward is starting outside the top ten, and his best starting spot in that span was ninth at Long Beach in April. He did go from 23rd to 11th at St. Petersburg in March. O'Ward was second and third in the two races from Indianapolis Motor Speedway. He has never had three consecutive podium finishes in his IndyCar career.
Kyffin Simpson will start on the inside of row ten in 19th, eight spots better than last year when Simpson started 27th in this race. Since finishing tenth at Long Beach, Simpson's average finish is 24.333. He has failed to finish on the lead lap in all three of those events, and notably was unable to start the Grand Prix of Indianapolis due to a gearbox problem. Simpson had completed every lap in the first three races.
After failing to qualify for the Indianapolis 500, Jacob Abel returns and scores his best starting position of the season. Abel will roll off from 20th position. His previous best was 23rd at Thermal Club. He had started on row 13 in his other four starts. In three Indy Lights starts on this course, Abel had finishes of fourth, ninth and fifth.
Santino Ferrucci will start 21st, and this will be the tenth consecutive race Ferrucci has started outside the top ten. He does have four top ten finishes in his last nine starts however. In nine starts between Belle Isle and this Detroit street course, Ferrucci has four top ten finishes. Seven of Ferrucci's 31 career top ten finishes have come from a starting spot outside the top twenty.
Last week, Robert Shwartzman started on the inside of row one. This week, Shwartzman will start on the outside of row 12 in Detroit. Shwartzman led the first laps of his career last week in the Indianapolis 500. Those were also Prema's first laps led in IndyCar.
Devlin DeFrancesco finds himself starting 23rd. DeFrancesco is coming off a career-best 11th-place result at Indianapolis. This will be the 41st start of his career and DeFrancesco is still looking for his first career top ten finish. He was 12th in his only start at this track in 2023.
Josef Newgarden hit the wall in qualifying, and that means Newgarden will start 24th for Detroit. Newgarden's top five finish slump is up to five races, his longest since 2018 when he went five races without a top five result over the two May races from Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the Belle Isle doubleheader and Texas. Newgarden has not gone six races without a top five finish since a 13-race stretch over the final two races of 2013 and the first 11 races of 2014. Four times has Newgarden finished in the top five after starting outside the top twenties. The most recent time was last year at Iowa going from 22nd to third.
Conor Daly ended up last in group one, placing Daly 25th on the grid. This is his worst stating position of the season. Daly has not had a top ten finish on a street course since he was sixth in the second Belle Isle race in 2016. He has made 23 street course starts since then. Daly was eighth last week at Indianapolis. He has not had consecutive top ten finishes since he was 2022 when he was fifth and sixth in the Grand Prix of Indianapolis and Indianapolis 500 respectively.
The two Juncos Hollinger Racing cars will be starting next to one another on the grid with Sting Ray Robb in 26th. Though he was ninth at Long Beach, Robb as finished outside the top twenty in the other five races this season. In his two Detroit starts, Robb has finished 22nd and 21st.
Mechanical woes plagued Nolan Siegel's qualifying, and Siegel will start 27th after only running two laps. Despite having an accident on the final lap of the Indianapolis 500, Siegel has finished in the top fifteen in three consecutive races. He had only four top fifteen finishes in his previous 15 starts.
Fox's coverage of the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix will begin at 12:30 p.m. ET with green flag scheduled for 12:52 p.m. The race is scheduled for 100 laps.