Herta On Long Beach Pole, Grosjean Denied By Crash
Grid Talk Reporter 21:35 09/04/2022
Andretti’s Colton Herta delivered a lap almost a second clear of the Long Beach track record to take pole position for this weekend’s Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, as Romain Grosjean crashed on a lap that could have beaten his team-mate to pole.
With a sealant compound down on the track, a host of support series in action and some minor track adjustments, the track record time tumbled as early as practice two, setting the scene for a rapid qualifying shootout. The Andretti cars, which have won the last three races on the California streets, were rapid in practice and qualifying, but Herta always felt like he would right the wrong of his qualifying error last year - where he qualified 14th but still won the race - this year. Herta and Grosjean emerged late in the final segment of qualifying, but Herta had done one fewer lap on his soft tyres, having run an extra lap on the hards in the first segment of qualifying to engineer a tactical gain.
He used that to his advantage to claim the top time, then with two seconds on the clock a red flag emerged for Grosjean who hit the inside wall at Turn 5 and then careered straight on into the barrier on the outside of the corner. Because of the two seconds remaining on the clock, the rulebook states the series can give the other drivers a final clear shot to make up for the lap they lost, so the four other drivers left in the session (after Grosjean bowed out through the crash) had a shot to go back out and get one lap in. Herta and Josef Newgarden of Team Penske - promoted to second after Grosjean lost his time for causing the red flag - stayed in the pits despite the opportunity to do another lap.
Arrow McLaren SP’s Felix Rosenqvist and the third Andretti in the top six, Alexander Rossi, tried to better their times from fourth and fifth in the order previously. Neither improved so Álex Palou sealed a third-place start at the venue he won his first IndyCar championship at in September last year. Despite the struggles of his Chip Ganassi team-mates Palou was aggressive using the red tyres early in each segment and clearly the strategy allowed him and his team to learn enough to boost themselves up the order into a top-three start. Rosenqvist continued a strong qualifying run - having taken pole last time out at Texas - with fourth ahead of the Andrettis of Rossi and Grosjean. Penske’s Will Power was the first driver to miss out on the Fast Six fight for pole session, setting an equal time to Grosjean, who went through by virtue of setting his lap earlier. Power blamed traffic at the hairpin for costing him a shot to advance.
Power waited in his car hopeful of being swapped into the pole battle but it was to no avail. Marcus Ericsson and Scott McLaughlin will start eighth and ninth after McLaughlin moved out of Ericsson’s way on his flying lap at Turn 9, only for Ericsson to back up feeling he had been slowed, and then hold up McLaughlin for his next lap as the pair were intertwined at the hairpin. Both drivers blamed each other for holding the other up in the incident. Ericsson had scraped through the first segment with a wicked lap at the last to knock out Graham Rahal, while McLaughlin - who has led over two-thirds of the laps this season as the points leader by 28 points - starts ninth and felt he’d have been better without the traffic. “I’ll be bombing for sure,” he said.
Simon Pagenaud had topped the first practice but narrowly missed out on a Fast Six place in 10th, ahead of Pato O’Ward, who lost a host of time on his flying lap at the final hairpin, and reigning Indy Lights champion Kyle Kirkwood who will start a career-best 12th. Rahal was a harsh casualty of the first segment as he lost out after being impeded through Turn 1, and then his second lap wasn’t good enough as he lamented Rahal Letterman Lanigan’s qualifying performance. Just behind, Pagenaud’s Meyer Shank team-mate Hélio Castroneves made a mistake in the last sector of his flying lap to miss out on advancing, and also lost his previous track record to boot.
Six-time champion Scott Dixon - who has a brilliant qualifying record at Long Beach despite one-lap sessions not being his specialty recently - narrowly missed out on the top six in his segment, which means he’ll start 16th after struggling with corner entry and overshooting Turn 6. Dixon’s Ganassi team-mate Jimmie Johnson crashed in both practice sessions earlier in the weekend and broke his hand in the first, but elected to qualify and is set to race with a carbon splint in his hand. He impeded Rahal at Turn 1 so will start from the back, as his focus will inevitably shift to self-preservation ahead of the upcoming Indy 500 he’s expected to be competitive at.
