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| Josef Newgarden's Gateway pole position has him one point closer to the Astor Cup |
Sébastien Bourdais gets his best starting position of 2019, as he will join Newgarden on the front row. Bourdais missed out on pole position by 0.1498 seconds. Bourdais has not won from second on the grid since he won his final Champ Car start in the 2007 season finale in Mexico City. This will be the 16th time he has started a race from second on the grid. He has won seven times from second starting position. He has finished on the podium 12 times from second on the grid. Four of Bourdais' seven top ten finishes in 2019 have come on ovals. Bourdais has never had a season where majority of his top ten finishes came on ovals. He has also never had a season where his number of top ten finishes on ovals and road/street courses were level.
Will Power is coming off a victory at Pocono and he will lead an all-Team Penske row two with Simon Pagenaud to Power's outside. Power is attempting to win consecutive oval races for the first time in his IndyCar career. The last driver to win consecutive races that were held on ovals was Ryan Hunter-Reay, who won at Iowa and Milwaukee in 2012. With Power's victory last week, every starting position within the top eight has won a race in 2019. Pagenaud has been running at the finish of 28 consecutive races. This is Pagenaud's longest streak of consecutive finishes in his IndyCar career. Pagenaud has finished in the top five in his first two Gateway starts. The only ovals where Pagenaud has three top five finishes or more are Texas, where he has had four, and Iowa, where he picked up his third top five finish at the track last month.
Takuma Sato will start fifth. This is the third consecutive race Sato has qualified in the top five. Sato's average finishing position on ovals this season is 14.75 and Sato has finished outside the top fifteen in four consecutive races. It is Sato's longest stretch without a top fifteen finish since he had nine consecutive results outside the top fifteen from the Indianapolis 500 to the second Toronto race in 2014. Santino Ferrucci will start a career best sixth. Ferrucci's previous best starting position was tenth at Barber. After Alexander Rossi's accident significantly hampered his Pocono race, Ferrucci is back to being the driver to have completed the most laps in 2019, having run 1,645 of 1,649 laps. The next closest driver is Pagenaud, who has run 1,637 laps.
James Hinchcliffe will start on row four will Scott Dixon. Hinchcliffe is three points outside the top ten in the championship. Hinchcliffe has started 18 races in the month of August. In those 18 starts, he has two podium finishes, five top five finishes and ten top ten finishes. Hinchcliffe has finished worse than his starting position in six of 14 races this season including in two of the four oval races. Dixon has four consecutive podium finishes. The only time Dixon has had five consecutive podium finishes in his career was in 2008 when he finished third at Motegi and Kansas, won the Indianapolis 500, finished second at Milwaukee and won at Texas. Dixon is one podium finish away from his first season with at least ten podium finishes since 2009. It would be the fourth time he has had double figures in podium finishes in his IndyCar career. This is the third time in the last four races Dixon has started eighth. This will be the 15th time Dixon has started eighth in his career.
Ryan Hunter-Reay will make his 250th IndyCar start this weekend and he will do it from ninth on the grid. Hunter-Reay is the 15th driver to reach the 250-start milestone. Each of his 50-start milestones have been finishes outside the top ten except for his 50th start, where he finished seventh in the 2008 season opener at Homestead. The only driver to win in a 250th start is A.J. Foyt who won at Ontario in 1977. Only three times has a driver make a 250th start not finished in the top ten. The only time Hunter-Reay has won from ninth in his career was at Iowa in 2015. Felix Rosenqvist rounds out the top ten in the #10 Monster Energy Honda. This is Rosenqvist's best qualifying result on an oval. Last week, he started ninth after entrant points set the starting grid. Rosenqvist has led 67 laps this season, most of the rookies and 27 laps more than all the other rookies have led combined in 2019. Rosenqvist has led double-digit laps in three races this season. The other rookies have led double-digit laps in a combined two races in 2019.
There has yet to be a winner in 2019 to start outside the top ten. The last season not to feature a winner from outside the top ten was 2009, when every race winner started within the first four positions on the grid.
There has yet to be a winner in 2019 to start outside the top ten. The last season not to feature a winner from outside the top ten was 2009, when every race winner started within the first four positions on the grid.
Alexander Rossi will start 11th, only the third time he has started outside the top ten this season and the second time on an oval. Rossi started 11th at Texas and went on to finish second to Newgarden. The only race Rossi has won from outside the top ten was the 2016 Indianapolis 500, where he started 11th. Rossi completed 39 laps at Pocono last week, the second fewest laps he has completed in his IndyCar career. The fewest laps he has completed in a race were 36 laps at Texas in 2017. That Texas race in 2017 is Rossi's most recent retirement. He has been running at the finish of 39 consecutive races. Colton Herta will be to Rossi's outside on row six. Herta has seven retirements from 14 starts this season and he has retired from all four oval races in 2019. In Herta's two Indy Lights starts at Gateway he finished third and second and last year he led 69 laps from pole position before Ryan Norman took the lead with six laps to go.
Spencer Pigot will start 13th with Marcus Ericsson next to Pigot on row seven. Pigot has not led a lap since he led four laps in the Indianapolis 500 in May. Pigot has led 16 laps in his career but he has never led more than eight laps in a single race. Pigot has never led a lap and then finished in the top ten of that same race in his IndyCar career. This is the fifth time Pigot has started 13th in his career. Pigot started 13th at Mid-Ohio last month and finished seventh. Ericsson has completed all but three laps in his four oval starts this season and he completed all 128 laps at Pocono last week. It was the third time Ericsson was the top finishing Schmidt Peterson Motorsports driver this season. He was the top SPM finisher in both Belle Isle races in June.
Row eight will feature two Ohioans with Zach Veach starting ahead of Graham Rahal. This is the seventh consecutive race Veach has started outside the top ten. Veach was the best finishing Andretti Autosport driver at Pocono with his 13th place result. It was the second time Veach was the top Andretti driver in 2019. On both occasions he was the top Andretti finisher none of the Andretti Autosport drivers finished in the top ten. This is Rahal's worst starting position since he had to start 22nd in the second Belle Isle race in June. Rahal has finished 12th and tenth in his two Gateway starts. His father Bobby made two Gateway starts with a 20th place result after an electrical failure and an eighth place finish.
Ed Carpenter and Conor Daly make it an all-American row nine. Seventeenth matches Carpenter's worst starting position of the season. He started 17th at Iowa last month. Carpenter has not finished on the lead lap at Gateway. The only tracks where Carpenter has not finished on the lead lap and has made at least three starts are Baltimore, where he made three starts, and Michigan, where he made four starts. Conor Daly has finished in the top fifteen in the last five races. The only time Daly has had five consecutive top fifteen finishes were during the final five races of 2017. Daly went from 11th to fifth in his only start at Gateway in 2017.
Charlie Kimball and Tony Kanaan round out the top twenty. Kimball completed all 128 laps of the rain-shortened Pocono race. It was Kimball's first lead lap finish on an oval since last year's Indianapolis 500. Kimball has not had consecutive lead laps finishes on ovals since Pocono and Gateway in 2017. Kanaan had four top ten finishes last year and he heads to Gateway coming off his third top ten finish of 2019 after finishing eighth at Pocono. Pocono was Kanaan's first lead lap finish since the first Belle Isle race in June. Kanaan has only four lead laps finishes in 2019. Kanaan has not started a race in the top ten this season with his best starting position being 13th at Iowa.
Matheus Leist will start 21st with Marco Andretti rounding out the grid in 22nd position. This is the 11th time Leist has qualified 20th or worse this season. Leist is coming off a 14th place finish at Pocono. It was Leist's first top fifteen finish since he finished 15th in the Indianapolis 500 in May. Leist has not finished on the lead lap since the Indianapolis 500 and he has only three lead lap finishes all season. Last year, Leist had ten lead lap finishes. This will be the 232nd start of Andretti's career. His grandfather Mario made his 232nd start at Michigan in 1983 and he finished fourth in that race. His father Michael made his 232nd start at Motegi in 1999 and he finished fifth in that race. Both Mario and Michael did not finish on the lead lap of their 232nd starts.
NBCSN's coverage of the Bommarito Auto Group 500 begins at 8:00 p.m. ET with green flag scheduled for 8:45 p.m. ET. The race is scheduled for 248 laps.
