Morning Warm-Up: Iowa 2019

Simon Pagenaud has positioned himself to repeat his May success in July at Iowa

Simon Pagenaud won his second consecutive pole position and his second career pole position at Iowa with a two-lap average of 180.073 MPH. This is the fifth consecutive Iowa pole position for Team Penske and eighth all-time at the track. Pagenaud picked up his first career victory from pole position last week at Toronto. It was the 14th victory of his career. The last driver to win consecutive races from pole position was Simon Pagenaud when he won at Barber and the Grand Prix of Indianapolis in 2016. The last driver to win consecutive races from pole position and have one of the races be on an oval was Sébastien Bourdais in 2006, who won the street race at Monterrey and then won at Milwaukee. Pagenaud has completed 1,998 laps out of 2,000 laps in his seven Iowa starts but he has only two top five finishes in seven starts and he has never finished on the podium at the track.

Will Power makes it an all-Penske front row, less than a tenth of a second off Pagenaud. This is the first all-Penske front row since the first race of the season when Power started on pole position and Josef Newgarden started second at St. Petersburg and this is the second consecutive year Team Penske has swept the front row at Iowa. Power has never won the 12th race of the season and his best finish in the 12th race of a season is second, which has occurred on three occasions and all three runner-up finishes occurred at Mid-Ohio. When Power has run in the 12th race of the season, he has finished outside the top ten on ten of 14 occasions with the only other finish in the top ten being ninth at Kentucky in 2009.

Josef Newgarden makes it a clean sweep of the top three for Team Penske and this is the third time Newgarden has started in the top three in the last four Iowa races. Newgarden has led over 100 laps in five of the last ten IndyCar short oval races. He only won two of those races but he did finish in the top five in all five races. Newgarden has 12 consecutive top ten finishes on short ovals and eight of those results were top five finishes. Takuma Sato will start on the outside of the second row. This is the fifth time Sato has started in the top ten at Iowa. Sato's third place finish last year at Iowa was his first top ten finish at the track in nine starts. Sato's average finish in 26 IndyCar starts in the month of July is 15.269 and 15 of those finishes have been outside the top fifteen and nine of those have been finishes outside the top twenty, including a 22nd place finish last week at Toronto.

James Hinchcliffe has yet to finish in the top five this season but he will start fifth for the Iowa 300. This is Hinchcliffe's third top five start of the season and the first time he has started in the top five at Iowa since he won from second on the grid at the track in 2013. Hinchcliffe's two top five finishes at Iowa are two victories. If he were to win this year's race he would join Ryan Hunter-Reay as the only driver with consecutive Iowa victories and he would tie Hunter-Reay for most Iowa victories at three. Alexander Rossi will start sixth, his second consecutive year starting on row three at Iowa. Rossi is looking for his fourth consecutive podium finish, which would be the longest streak in his IndyCar career. Rossi has six podium finishes this season. He had eight podium finishes all of last season. He has nine top five finishes through 11 races and he had ten top five finishes over the entire 2018 season.

Graham Rahal is eighth in the championship and he will start seventh. This is Rahal's best start at Iowa since he started sixth in 2013. Rahal has completed 2,989 of a possible 3,000 laps in his 11 career starts, 99.6% of the most possible laps completed. Of the drivers with at least three Iowa starts, the only drivers to complete a higher percentage of laps are Simon Pagenaud and Hélio Castroneves at 99.7%. Scott Dixon starts eighth in the #9 PNC Bank Honda. Dixon has never won at Iowa but he has the most top five finishes at the track with six and he has the most top ten finishes at the track with nine. Dixon's best Iowa finish was third in 2011 and third in 2016. The only track where Dixon has more starts without a victory is St. Petersburg, where has 15 starts. Dixon has never won an IndyCar race from eighth position on the grid.

Ryan Hunter-Reay will roll off from the ninth starting position. Hunter-Reay won from ninth at Iowa in 2015. Hunter-Reay has not finished outside the top ten in three consecutive races since he had five consecutive races without a top ten finish from the Indianapolis 500 to Road America in 2017. When Hunter-Reay won at Iowa in 2014, it was the 12th race of the season. This year, Iowa is the 12th race of the season. Marcus Ericsson rounds out the top ten and it is only the second time he has started in the top ten this season. Ericsson started ninth in the Grand Prix of Indianapolis. He has been outside the top fifteen in the championship after eight of 11 races this season. The only time Ericsson has been the top finishing rookie this season was at Barber when he finished seventh.

Colton Herta starts 11th for his first IndyCar start at Iowa. Herta made two starts at Iowa in Indy Lights. He won pole position for the 2017 race but finished fourth and last year he was runner-up to Patricio O'Ward. Last year, James Hinchcliffe won from 11th at Iowa, the first time the Iowa winner started 11th. The only other time the 11th place started finished on the podium at this track was when Hideki Mutoh finished third in 2009. Santino Ferrucci makes it three consecutive rookies on the grid with Ferrucci on the outside of row six. He has finished better than his starting position in seven consecutive races including improvements of 16 positions at the Indianapolis 500 and 14 positions at Texas.

Tony Kanaan gets his best starting position of the season, as he qualified 13th. It is the first time Kanaan has started in the top fifteen this season and he started 13th last year at Iowa. Kanaan has gone 32 starts since his last top five finish, a fifth place at Pocono in 2017. Kanaan had five consecutive podium finishes at Iowa from 2010 to 2014. Since, he has finished 21st, seventh, ninth and 17th. Sage Karam joins his former Chip Ganassi Racing teammate on row seven. This is Karam's best starting position since he started tenth at Iowa in 2015. Karam has finished outside the top twenty in five of his last seven starts with his other two finishes in that time span being 14th and 19th.

Felix Rosenqvist rounds out the top fifteen with Conor Daly joining him on row eight. Rosenqvist did not run at Iowa in 2016 when he was in Indy Lights. He is looking for his first career top ten finish on an oval after finishing 28th at the Indianapolis 500 and 12th at Texas. This will be Daly's fourth consecutive start on an oval. Last year at Iowa, the Carlin cars of Charlie Kimball and Max Chilton finished 14th and 15th after starting 17th and 21st respectively.

Ed Carpenter starts 17th, his worst starting position at Iowa since he started 21st in 2012. Carpenter has only led 18 laps in 11 Iowa starts. All 18 laps led were in the 2013 race, where Carpenter started a career-best fourth at the track and finished a career-best fourth. Carpenter has only one top five finish in his last 25 starts. That lone top five finish was second in last year's Indianapolis 500. Marco Andretti makes it an all-American row nine. This is the fourth consecutive year Andretti has started outside the top fifteen at Iowa. Andretti has completed the most laps all-time at Iowa, 3,156 out of 3,250 or 97.1% of every IndyCar lap ever run at Iowa. Andretti had four podium finishes in the first six Iowa races. In the last six Iowa races he has two top ten finishes with his best finish being seventh.

Row ten is another all-American row with Spencer Pigot and Zach Veach starting 19th and 20th respectively. Pigot made his 50th start last week at Toronto and he has yet to win an IndyCar race. Only 27 drivers scored their first career victory after their 50th career start. Only four of those drivers went on to win a championship and those drivers were Roger McCluskey, Jimmy Vasser, Buddy Lazier and Josef Newgarden. The only driver to pick up a first career victory in the 51st start of a career was Jeff Ward at Texas on June 8, 2002. Veach has only four lead lap finishes this season from 11 races and he has only 13 lead lap finishes from 30 starts in his IndyCar career. The only lead lap finish on an oval in Veach's short IndyCar career was last year at Gateway. Two drivers have scored their first career victory in their 31st career start: Tony Kanaan at Michigan in 1999 and Airton Daré at Kansas in 2002.

Sébastien Bourdais will make his 200th IndyCar start from 21st position, his second worst starting position at Iowa and only the 13th time he has started outside the top twenty in his IndyCar career. Entering Iowa, Bourdais had four consecutive top ten starts. Bourdais has not had five consecutive top ten starts since last year from Phoenix to the Indianapolis 500. Bourdais has won from 21st on the grid before. He won the 2017 season opener at St. Petersburg from 21st on the grid. The only driver with multiple victories from a starting position outside the top twenty is Scott Dixon, who won at Nazareth in 2001 from 23rd and Dixon won from 22nd at Mid-Ohio in 2014. Matheus Leist rounds out the grid in 22nd. This is the ninth time Leist has started 20th or worse this season. Leist's average finish in eight oval starts is 17.5 and he has finished dead last in three of those starts. Leist won at Iowa in Indy Lights in 2017. It was Leist's final Indy Lights victory and podium finish.

NBCSN's coverage of the Iowa 300 begins at 7:00 p.m. ET with green flag scheduled for 7:15 p.m. ET. The race is scheduled for 300 laps.