Morning Warm-Up: Austin 2019

Will Power will be gunning for an extra $100,000 in Austin

Will Power won his 56th career pole position and the inaugural IndyCar pole position at Circuit of the Americas. Power took the top spot with a lap of 106.0177 seconds in the final round of qualifying. This is the 26th different circuit he has won a pole position at and it is the third different Texas circuit where he has won a pole position. The last time Power won pole position in the second race of the season was at Barber in 2011. He won that race and led every lap in the process. That was also the last time a driver won pole position in the first two races of a season. Power will also have a little more incentive to win this race. This race will pay a $100,000 bonus if the pole-sitter wins the race. He has won 16 times from pole position in his career at 12 different tracks.

Power has won three inaugural races in his career but all three of those were street circuits with victories at Las Vegas, São Paulo and Baltimore. In the five inaugural road course races Power has participated in his best finish is fourth, which came at Zolder and Barber. He finished 14th at Assen and he had finishes of eighth and seventh in the inaugural Grand Prix of Indianapolis and at NOLA Motorsports Park respectively.

Alexander Rossi will start second after he missed out on pole position by 0.1584 seconds. This is the first time Rossi has qualified second in his IndyCar career. He started second last year at Gateway but that field was set by points after qualifying was rained out. He has won or finished second in four of his five front row starts with the exception being last year's second race at Belle Isle when he suffered a flat tire after he locked up while leading and dropped back to 12th. Rossi has made the Firestone Fast Six on seven consecutive occasions after Saturday's session and he has now made it out of the first round on 15 consecutive occasions. The last time he has not made it out of round one was at Road America in 2016.

Ryan Hunter-Reay will start third and this is his seventh consecutive top five start. He has nine top five starts in the last ten races with his worst start in that stretch being sixth. Hunter-Reay is the only Texan-born driver in the field. The last Texan-born driver to win in Texas was A.J. Foyt on August 5, 1979 at Texas World Speedway. Hunter-Reay's 18 victories are second most for a Texas-born driver, behind only Foyt's 67 victories. Hunter-Reay has twice won from third on the grid, at Watkins Glen in 2008 and at Barber in 2014. Colton Herta will turn 19 years old six days after this race and he will start a career-best fourth position. Herta could become the first driver to win in the third start of a career since Scott Dixon at Nazareth on May 6, 2001. Dixon started 23rd that day. The most recent IndyCar race won after a driver qualified fourth was Takuma Sato at the Indianapolis 500 in 2017. Power won last year at Gateway from fourth on the grid but that field was set by points. The last road/street course won from fourth was James Hinchcliffe at Long Beach in 2017.

For the second consecutive race, both Chip Ganassi Racing drivers will start on the same row and for the second consecutive race, Felix Rosenqvist qualified ahead of Scott Dixon with the Swede starting fifth and Dixon starting sixth. Rosenqvist's fourth place finish on debut was the first top five finish on debut in IndyCar since Carlos Muñoz finished second at Indianapolis in 2013. Rosenqvist could become the first driver with top five finishes in the first two starts of a career since Nigel Mansell, who finished first, third, third and first in the first four starts of his career in 1993. Rosenqvist could become the first driver to win in a second start of a career since Jim Clark won at Milwaukee on August 18, 1963. Dixon has never won the inaugural IndyCar race at a track. This will be the tenth inaugural race Dixon has participated in and his results in the previous nine have been scattered. His average finish in those nine races is 10.333 with his lone podium finish being second at Barber in 2010. His only other top five finish was fifth at Baltimore in 2011. He has finished outside the top ten in four of the nine races including the two most recent inaugural races, the Grand Prix of Indianapolis in 2014 and NOLA in 2015.

Josef Newgarden missed out on the Fast Six by 0.0363 seconds and he will start seventh. Three of Newgarden's 11 IndyCar victories have come from seventh on the grid, tied with second for most victories from a starting position. Last year, he won the second race of the season at Phoenix from seventh on the grid. Newgarden led a lap in five of the six natural-terrain road course races in 2018. The lone race he did not lead a lap in was Mid-Ohio. Newgarden has started in the top ten in 14 consecutive natural-terrain road course races after this qualifying result with his most recent start outside the top ten being 12th at Watkins Glen in 2016. Patricio O'Ward will make his long-awaited second career start in IndyCar and he will start a career-worst eighth. The best finish for a Mexican driver in the state of Texas is third. Mexican-born Memo Gidley finished third in the 1999 Houston race and Mario Domínguez finished third in the 2007 Houston race.

Zach Veach and Graham Rahal form an all-Buckeye row five. Veach has finished outside the top ten in the last three races after having four consecutive top ten finishes prior to that. Rahal did not have a top five finish on a natural-terrain road course last year and he finished 23rd in the last two natural-terrain road course races. His most recent top five finish on a natural-terrain road course was fifth at Watkins Glen in 2017. Santino Ferrucci will start a career-best 11th. Ferrucci's finish has not gotten worse over his IndyCar career. After finishing 23rd on debut at Belle Isle, he finished 20th in the next Belle Isle race and 20th at Portland but he has finished 11th and ninth in his last two races. Matheus Leist made it to the second round of qualifying for the third time in his career and for the first time since last year at Toronto, though it came with a timely red flag in group two's session in round one. Leist will start 12th. Prior to this result, Leist had started on row nine or worse in six consecutive races and in 11 of the 12 races since the 102nd Indianapolis 500.

Both groups in round one were ended prematurely due to red flags and the drivers just on the outside were Max Chilton and Takuma Sato. Chilton missed out on advancing by 0.0007 seconds. This will be Chilton's 52nd start and he has yet to score a podium finish. Only 13 drivers have taken more than 52 starts to score their first career podium finish in IndyCar. Scott Brayton holds the record at 121 races and Ed Carpenter is second at 94 starts. Sato has never finished in the top ten in the second race of the season in his IndyCar career. His best finish in the second race of the season came last year at Phoenix when he finished 11th. His average finish in the second race of the season is 18.333 with four finishes outside the top twenty.

It will be an all-Schmidt Peterson Motorsports row with James Hinchcliffe and Marcus Ericsson on row eight. Two of Hinchcliffe's five career victories came in the second race of the season. He won the second race in 2015 at NOLA Motorsports Park and in 2017 at Long Beach. He has also finished outside the top twenty in the second race of the season on three occasions. In four Formula One starts at Austin, Ericsson's best starting position was 13th with an average starting spot of 14.8. Austin was Ericsson's third best track in terms of average finish amongst tracks with multiple starts at 13.5.

Sébastien Bourdais missed out on advancing and he will start 17th. He has not finished behind a teammate in consecutive races since Phoenix and the Grand Prix of Indianapolis in 2017. Bourdais has not finished in the top ten of a race but behind a teammate in a IndyCar race since Surfers Paradise 2006 when Bruno Junqueira finished sixth and Bourdais finished eighth while both were driving for Newman-Haas Racing. Ed Jones joins his former teammate on row nine. Ed Jones has retired from two of the last three races due to accidents. Jones has yet to make it to the final round of knockout qualifying in his IndyCar career.

Spencer Pigot will start 19th. Five of Pigot's top ten finishes have come on natural-terrain road courses and four of those have come with him starting outside the top ten. Pigot has finished in the top ten two out of the three times he has started 19th in his career. Marco Andretti makes it an all-American row ten. Andretti could do something this weekend the Andretti family has never done before. The Andretti family has never won an IndyCar race in the state of Texas. His grandfather Mario only made two starts in the state of Texas, both at Texas World Speedway and both in 1973. In those races, Mario had finishes of 25th, after a broken piston, and 17th, after a broken valve. His father Michael's best finish in the state is third in the 1999 Houston race. Marco's best finish is third in the 2010 Texas race.

Kyle Kaiser will make his first start of 2019 from 21st position. This will be the fifth start of Kaiser's career. He is still looking for the first lead lap finish of his career. The red flag in group two caught out Simon Pagenaud and he will have to start 22nd. This is the fifth consecutive race Pagenaud has not started in the top five. The last time he did not start in the top five in five consecutive races was from the Grand Prix of Indianapolis to Texas in 2017. Pagenaud's longest streak without a top five start is 18 races from Sonoma 2012 to Sonoma 2013. This is the 11th time in Pagenaud's career he has started outside the top twenty and this will be his 137th start. Pagenaud's best finish when starting outside the top twenty is fifth, which happened at Iowa in 2012 and Long Beach in 2017.

Jack Harvey was the driver that caused the red flag in group one and he will start 23rd. Harvey could become the seventh British driver to score the first two top ten finishes of a career in consecutive races. The other British drivers to do it are Dario Resta, Jim Clark, David Hobbs, Nigel Mansell, Justin Wilson and Dan Clarke. Tony Kanaan spun after completing a lap that put him in the top six of group two but instead he will start this race from 24th. This is Kanaan tenth consecutive start outside the top ten, the worst stretch of his career. Kanaan has not started in the top ten on either a road or street course since he started tenth at Barber in 2017.

NBCSN's coverage of the IndyCar Classic will begin at 1:00 p.m. ET with green flag scheduled for 1:40 p.m. ET. The race is scheduled for 60 laps.