McLaughlin leads heavily delayed Nashville IndyCar qualifying

Scott McLaughlin delivered Team Penske’s first road and street course pole of the season and its third IndyCar pole in a row on a tricky day in Nashville.

Qualifying for the final Nashville IndyCar event in its current format – it will have a new track next year and become the season finale – was delayed by three and a half hours from just after lunch to early evening due to heavy rain and standing water. Conditions were sunny and fully dry by the time the session took place.

Last year’s Nashville pole winner McLaughlin had looked assured earlier in practice, but there were a range of strategies for the pole shootout including championship leader Alex Palou using the hard tyre, and Colton Herta trying just one run on the softs.

But McLaughlin delivered a lap a stunning six tenths of a second faster than his rivals as the chequered flag came out, helped by having saved some tyre life by only needing one attempt to get through the group stages. While Pato O’Ward improved to half that deficit, it was still a stunning effort from the Kiwi who won at Barber and is fifth in the championship.

McLaren driver O’Ward was his team’s only representative in the Fast Six, ahead of Herta who’d taken pole in the first year of the race in 2021 for Andretti.

Palou will be satisfied that even though fourth isn’t pole, he starts ahead of all of his main title rivals with Josef Newgarden in ninth and Scott Dixon having crashed.

That Dixon crash in the Fast 12 section could have ended McLaughlin’s pole bid as he was outside the crucial top six as the accident happened but completed a lap that got him through to the next segment in the moments before the red flag actually came out.

David Malukas was fifth for Dale Coyne Racing – a team he will leave at the end of the year – in his best qualifying performance of the year, ahead of Romain Grosjean, who was sixth for Andretti and sporting a new moustache this weekend.

Will Power was the first driver to miss out on the Fast Six, in a tough Q2 where a rare Dixon crash with 18 seconds remaining gave the drivers just one more flying lap on tyres that had been through a heat cycle, and no one improved after that incident.

Kyle Kirkwood was the closest to advancing for Andretti but narrowly missed out in eighth, ahead of Indianapolis 500 winner and hometown hero Newgarden and Arrow McLaren’s Alexander Rossi.

Ace rookie and reigning Indy Lights champion Linus Lundqvist – replacing the concussed Simon Pagenaud at Meyer Shank – was arguably the star of the day, managing 11th for his IndyCar debut ahead of last year’s winner Dixon.

Lundqvist – who won in Indy Lights last time he raced in Nashville – bumped out the last IndyCar street pole winner Christian Lundgaard with his penultimate lap in Q1.

He needed two sets of soft tyres to make it through where most drivers used one, which meant he was at a deficit in Q2 and couldn’t overcome there.

Championship contender Marcus Ericsson – who won the 2021 event after crashing – struggled with brakes in practice and battled again on Saturday, only managing to qualify 20th when his season average is 8.3, the fifth-best in the series.

Qualifying Results