McLaughlin On Season-Opener Pole In St. Petersburg
Grid Talk Reporter 18:47 26/02/2022
Scott McLaughlin beat his Team Penske team-mate and St Petersburg specialist Will Power to earn his maiden IndyCar pole position at the 2022 season-opener.
McLaughlin had topped the final practice session before qualifying and was right in the mix during IndyCar’s Fast Six pole shootout. Power set two laps good enough to top the session until McLaughlin’s last-ditch effort moved him up to pole on a 00:59.482. It meant McLaughlin - who had near zero single-seater experience before leaving Australia’s Supercars touring cars series for IndyCar at the end of 2020 after three straight titles - claimed his first IndyCar pole and he’ll share the front row of the grid with Power after beating him by 0.123 seconds. McLaughlin had only once previously qualified in the top 10 in his short IndyCar career.
Power has taken nine of the last 12 IndyCar poles at St Pete but had to settle for second, with Andretti Autosport’s Colton Herta rounding out the top three. Ed Carpenter Racing driver Rinus VeeKay was fourth ahead of Andretti’s Romain Grosjean, who recovered from a practice crash with Takuma Sato that left him with bruises. The top six was completed by Simon Pagenaud in his first qualifying session with the Meyer Shank Racing outfit.
Chip Ganassi Racing’s leading trio of drivers all failed to advance to the Fast Six with six-time Scott Dixon seventh ahead of ex-Formula 1 driver Marcus Ericsson. Dixon survived on a brush with the Turn 9 wall while on the black primary tyres and then believed he missed the optimum window on his red soft tyre run. Penske’s two-time series champion Josef Newgarden was ninth with unspecified “issues” and “things in the background working against us”, and defending champion Álex Palou rounded out the top 10. Graham Rahal had two new team-mates alongside him at Rahal Letterman Lanigan but neither were able to outqualify him. Rahal claimed 11th on the grid ahead of the highest-placed 2022 rookie Kyle Kirkwood in his first IndyCar qualifying session.
Alexander Rossi just missed out on a place in the Fast 12 and will line up 13th as a crucial year with Andretti begins. AJ Foyt’s Dalton Kellett earned his best IndyCar qualifying result in 14th place ahead of RLLR’s newcomer Christian Lundgaard and Arrow McLaren SP’s Pato O’Ward - who bent a tow-link when he clipped the wall at Turn 9. MSR driver Hélio Castroneves will share the ninth row with Andretti rookie Devlin DeFrancesco, ahead of Callum Ilott (Juncos Racing) and Conor Daly (ECR).
Like his McLaren team-mate O’Ward, Felix Rosenqvist was unable to advance and will start 21st - where he finished in last year’s drivers’ championship after a difficult first year with the team. Sato was 22nd in his first qualifying session with Dale Coyne Racing ahead of RLL’s other new recruit Jack Harvey and Sato’s rookie team-mate David Malukas. The back row of the grid will be compromised of ex-Super Formula and Formula 2 driver Tatiana Calderón and Ganassi’s Jimmie Johnson.
