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In his final race for Arrow McLaren, Felix Rosenqvist qualified on pole position for Sunday’s Firestone Grand Prix of Monterey at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca.
The Swede set a fastest lap of 1:06.6416, averaging 120.897 mph for his fifth pole of his NTT IndyCar Series career, less than a tenth of a second faster than second-fastest Scott McLaughlin around the 11-turn, 2.238-mile road course.
McLaughlin set the penultimate lap of the Firestone Fast Six, but 1:06.6513 wasn’t enough to put the Kiwi on pole. Christian Lundgaard was third fastest ahead of Josef Newgarden, Scott Dixon and Alex Palou in sixth.
The first group in round one had 10 minutes of track time to set their best laps to advance to round two and nearly every driver broke the 23-year-old track record set by Helio Castroneves as Dixon led the six competitors that advanced to round two. Only one red flag interrupted the group when Ryan Hunter-Reay spun exiting Turn 11 and stalled the #20 Ed Carpenter Racing Chevrolet.
IndyCar extended the first group’s running time in round one so the rest of the group could set one more fast lap and the top six was completely jumbled up from when the checkered flag flew. Dixon led Romain Grosjean, Juri Vips, Santino Ferrucci, Rosenqvist and Rinus VeeKay through to the second round.
The second group had a red flag after two and a half minutes when Helio Castroneves spun the #06 Meyer Shank Racing Honda in Turn 3. After the IndyCar safety crew cleaned the gravel off the track after putting Castroneves’s car back on the circuit, race control continued the session. More drivers went faster than the track record as Pato O’Ward led the second group of qualifiers. Also advancing to round two from that group was McLaughlin, Lundgaard, Newgarden, Palou and Will Power.
Round two had no red flags to interrupt the 10-minute session as Lundgaard led McLaughlin, Palou, Rosenqvist, Dixon and Newgarden through to the Firestone Fast Six. There was a drama for O’Ward as he spun on his final lap of the session and he ended up 12th on the provisional grid before engine change penalties are applied.
Lundgaard’s fastest lap of 1:06.4610 in round two is the new track record. The Dane averaged 121.226 mph in the #45 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda.
While the results below are from the three rounds of qualifying, Juri Vips, Santino Ferrucci and Agustin Canapino will each have six grid position penalties for unapproved engine changes.
