IndyCar Road America: Newgarden beats Harvey to pole

As is customary for NTT IndyCar Series double-header weekends at road and street courses, the more usual qualifying format was replaced. Positions at the end of morning practice defined how the field was divided in two – odd-numbered in one group, even-numbered in the other – with the fastest driver (in this case Team Penske-Chevrolet’s Will Power) getting to choose which group went out first. The fastest driver of the two groups would earn pole and thereby grant ‘his’ group all the odd-numbered positions on the grid, while the fastest driver from the other group would earn outside front row spot and this group would fill out all the even-numbered positions on the grid.

So that the track was rubbered in as much as possible, Power inevitably chose his group to go out second, yet for much of the session, it seemed as if Harvey’s top time from Group 1 – 1min45.729 – would stand strong and give him his first pole.

However a three-way struggle in Group 2 between Newgarden, teammate Power and Andretti Autosport-Honda’s Ryan Hunter-Reay, saw Newgarden set a 1min45.519 to claim his 15^th pole in IndyCar. Hunter-Reay fell 0.1372sec short of that mark, while Power overcooked his last lap of the 4.014-mile course and was three-tenths down.

Said Newgarden: "The boys worked really hard trying to turn around from the GP. It’s been a fast day and the guys have had to be on-it with their decision-making. Compared to practice, I think we tried to get a little cheeky with our tire usage, and we were a little off-page with the other people, but Gavin [Ward, race engineer] and me tried to figure out the pieces that were good and put them back on the car then it worked out really well. So now, we’ve got to worry about the race car.

Scott Dixon, winner of the first two races of 2020, was fifth fastest in the second group, just ahead of last year’s dominant winner at Road America, Alexander Rossi.

Today's race gets the green flag at 5.08pm ET. 

GROUP 2

Cla	Driver	Team	Time	Gap	Mph
1	Josef Newgarden	Team Penske	1'45.519		136.946
2	Ryan Hunter-Reay	Andretti Autosport	1'45.656	0.137	136.768
3	Will Power	Team Penske	1'45.824	0.305	136.551
4	Colton Herta	Andretti Harding Steinbrenner Autosport	1'45.860	0.341	136.504
5	Scott Dixon	Chip Ganassi Racing	1'45.932	0.413	136.412
6	Alexander Rossi	Andretti Autosport	1'46.136	0.617	136.149
7	Marcus Ericsson	Chip Ganassi Racing	1'46.298	0.778	135.942
8	Takuma Sato	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	1'46.536	1.017	135.638
9	Simon Pagenaud	Team Penske	1'46.709	1.189	135.419
10	Conor Daly	Ed Carpenter Racing	1'46.811	1.292	135.289
11	Oliver Askew	Arrow McLaren SP	1'47.113	1.594	134.908
12	Dalton Kellett	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	1'47.576	2.057	134.327
View full results

GROUP 1

Cla	Driver	Team	Time	Gap	Mph
1	Jack Harvey	Meyer Shank Racing	1'45.729		136.674
2	Graham Rahal	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	1'45.759	0.030	136.635
3	Santino Ferrucci	Dale Coyne Racing with Vasser Sullivan	1'45.769	0.040	136.621
4	Felix Rosenqvist	Chip Ganassi Racing	1'45.846	0.117	136.522
5	Marco Andretti	Andretti Herta Autosport with Marco & Curb-Agajani	1'45.988	0.259	136.339
6	Patricio O'Ward	Arrow McLaren SP	1'46.035	0.306	136.279
7	Alex Palou	Dale Coyne Racing with Team Goh	1'46.126	0.397	136.163
8	Rinus van Kalmthout	Ed Carpenter Racing	1'46.130	0.401	136.157
9	Max Chilton	Carlin	1'46.387	0.658	135.828
10	Zach Veach	Andretti Autosport	1'46.470	0.741	135.722
11	Charlie Kimball	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	1'47.686	1.957	134.190
View full results