Newgarden takes another IndyCar pole with hard tyre gamble

Penske’s Josef Newgarden took his second successive IndyCar pole at Road America, despite using the harder tyres.

Going against the grain as his rivals in the pole session all went for the softer red-branded Firestones, Newgarden produced a 1m46.0186s to depose Colton Herta’s Andretti Autosport car by two tenths of a second.

Newgarden’s Penske team is still searching for its first IndyCar win of 2021, but has three of its four cars in the top six at Elkhart Lake.

Will Power and Simon Pagenaud start fourth and sixth, sandwiching Ganassi’s title contender Alex Palou.

Jack Harvey produced another superb qualifying run for Meyer Shank Racing to secure third place behind Herta.

Romain Grosjean missed the cut for the Fast Six pole shootout by half a tenth of a second.

The Dale Coyne Racing driver was one of the first to complete a final flying lap in the previous segment but was pushed back as others improved so will start seventh ahead of Andretti Autosport pair Ryan Hunter-Reay and Alexander Rossi.

Grosjean’s long-time Haas Formula 1 team-mate Kevin Magnussen will line up 21st on the grid for his IndyCar debut with Arrow McLaren SP in place of Felix Rosenqvist.

Magnussen felt more was possible had he strung a lap together properly, but admitted getting up to speed in IndyCar with the aggressive-handling AMSP car around a track as demanding as Road America across two 45-minute practice sessions was not easy.

His championship-leading team-mate Pato O’Ward starts a disappointing 10th, saying he hadn’t found a satisfactory car balance all weekend.

Reigning champion Scott Dixon didn’t get out of the group stages and starts 13th. His day was disrupted by an impact with debris in morning practice that did substantial damage to the underside of his Ganassi Dallara-Honda.

Team-mate Marcus Ericsson, the race one winner in Detroit last weekend, is five places further back, saying his car felt fine yet simply lacked pace.

Oliver Askew had flown in practice on his stand-in appearance for Ed Carpenter Racing following Rinus VeeKay’s bicycle crash injury, but was caught out by understeer in qualifying and was only eighth in his group, leaving him 16th on the grid.

Qualifying Results