Christian Lundgaard was the quickest driver on Friday and carried that speed over to qualifying to earn his third career pole position and first since joining Arrow McLaren.
The Dane led an Arrow McLaren 1-2 with a lap of 58.3939s in the No. 7 Chevy and has Pato O’Ward alongside him in the No. 5 Chevy (58.5343s) on the time sheet, but come Sunday it will be O’Ward who starts first as Lundgaard gets demoted to seventh for an unapproved engine change.
“No, honestly, as I crossed the line, I still didn’t really expect it,” Lundgaard said of his surprise pole. “I just felt like I had a big push in Turn 5, a big push in Turn 6. I knew I was slower than the Fast 12 (lap he turned), so I didn’t really think that was it. We were discussing this, and this was kind of best case scenario for us, obviously, with the six-place grid penalty. I’m proud of this team.”
Lundgaard took the point for pole, but with the adjusted Firestone Fast Six for the BitNile.com Grand Prix, it’s O’Ward promoted to first, Meyer Shank Racing’s Felix Rosenqvist to start second in the No. 60 Honda (58.5583s), defending Portland winner Will Power from Team Penske in third with the No. 12 Chevy (58.6424s), AJ Foyt Racing’s David Malukas in fourth with the No. 4 Chevy (58.6557s), championship leader Alex Palou in fifth with the No. 10 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda after making an uncharacteristic mistake (58.6690s), and Ed Carpenter Racing’s Alexander Rossi, who was elevated to sixth in the No. 20 Chevy (58.4973s), with Lundgaard right behind Palou on the grid in seventh.
“It’s a bit of a surprising qualifying considering where we were in practice,” O’Ward said. “We’re still inching away at trying to make it better. So much changes in a year.”
Rosenqvist is always good at Portland and continued his stream of strong performances as Honda’s top qualifier.
“P3, effectively front row after penalties. It was a good day for us,” the Swede said.
Palou was somewhat bemused by the reactions to his brake-locking error entering the final corner which pitched the No. 10 car off the road and nose-first into the tire barrier with qualifying almost over. He was able to reverse and get going with minimal time loss, but surrendered his fastest lap for triggering a local caution.
“I just tried a bit too hard,” Palou said. “We wanted that pole. I started locking early on and couldn’t get the car stopped. I was trying my best. I was trying to go as fast as possible. Went a little bit too hard, but happy that we’re starting top six tomorrow and ready to go for it.”
Elsewhere, Josef Newgarden was impressive in ninth after sitting out a fair portion of the previous session as an engine change was performed in his No. 2 Team Penske Chevy. Marcus Ericsson was the lone Andretti Global representative in 11th after teammate Colton Herta was fastest in the morning practice run but fell to 16th; Andretti’s Kyle Kirkwood was equally as surprised to be so far off in 20th.
A pleasant surprise for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing was found with Devlin DeFrancesco who led the team in qualifying with a lap that earned 14th ahead of teammates Louis Foster in 17th and Graham Rahal in 22nd. Santino Ferrucci, last year’s polesitter, was a distant 15th.
With morning warmup moved to the end of Saturday afternoon, teams will be back on track at 5:32pm. local and have 110 laps to prepare for on Sunday with an anticipated green flag at 12:22pm PT/3:22 pm ET.
AS IT HAPPENED…
The opening round of knockout qualifying for the BitNile.com Grand Prix of Portland pitted 13 drivers against each other to secure six transfer spots, and once the session was over, Palou (58.1185s), Kyffin Simpson, Power, Marcus Armstrong, Rossi and Malukas made it through to the Fast 12.
Finished and locked in for the race, McLaughlin will start P13, followed by Ferrucci (P15), Foster (P17), Nolan Siegel (P19), Sting Ray Robb (P21), Rinus VeeKay (P23), and a red flag was required with one minute to go for Robert Shwartzman’s meeting with the Turn 12 tire barrier, which meant he lost his fastest laps and was relegated to last in his group (P25).
The second group of 14 drivers started lapping with a comfortable 75F enveloping the track. The fastest and transferring six were led by O’Ward (58.2420s), Ericsson, Newgarden, Scott Dixon, Lundgaard and Rosenqvist. Finished onsite were DeFrancesco (P14), a surprise with Herta (P16), Christian Rasmussen (P18), Kirkwood (P20), Rahal (P22), Callum Ilott (P24), Conor Daly (P26) and Jacob Abel (P27).
Firestone’s Fast 12 got under way and the fastest traded the lead position until Rosenqvist settled the matter (58.1918s) and was followed by Lundgaard, O’Ward, Palou, Power and Malukas who would go on to battle for pole. The rest climbed from their cars with Rossi (P7), Armstrong (P8), Newgarden (P9), Dixon (P10), Ericsson (P11) and Simpson (P12) moving to the sidelines as the run for pole came into frame.
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