By David Morgan, Associate Editor
INDIANAPOLIS – When the green flag flies for Saturday’s Gallagher Grand Prix at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, it will be the No. 7 Arrow McLaren SP Chevrolet and Felix Rosenqvist leading the field into Turn 1 after scoring the pole on Friday.
After bolting on the red Firestone alternates during the Fast Six, Rosenqvist’s lap of one minute, 10.226 seconds was quick enough to boost him to the top of the board for his second pole of the 2022 season.
“It’s been a pretty smooth day, surprisingly smooth, and I think those guys are kind of rare in INDYCAR,” Rosenqvist said. “I think the whole team has just done a really good prep work for this race. We tested here like a month ago, which I think really helped. We kind of got here with a good starting package, so we knew that this was going to be one that we had to really extract everything in qualifying.
“But yeah, it was really cool. We did only one lap in Q1, saved those tires for the Fast Six, and everything just worked out to plan. Man, it’s rare to have those days, but I think today was just a day about execution, and now eyes forward to tomorrow.”
Rosenqvist will be joined by current Andretti Autosport and future McLaren driver Alexander Rossi, who backed up his speed from practice to time in second fastest.
“It’s great to be here during the GP,” said Rossi. “We’ve always historically struggled here, especially in qualifying. Our race pace has been good in the past, and that’s never been an issue, but we’ve never been able to qualify here, so we had a really good test a month ago, and it’s nice to see that translate. We had a really good test in Iowa, too. That didn’t really work out.
“It’s good. It’s good to be back obviously at the speedway. We all love coming here, and it’s great to be here on the triple-header weekend, and hopefully we can have a good day tomorrow.
“That lap that Felix did, I don’t think we had anything for it, so hats off to him.”
Rosenqvist’s Arrow McLaren teammate, Pato O’Ward made wholesale gains from his struggles in practice to claim the third starting spot. Will Power will join him on Row 2.
“It’s a great team result,” O’Ward said. “Extremely happy with, first of all, making it to the Fast Six because when we started qualifying we were in trouble, just as we were in FP1.
“We turned — I don’t know how we did that, but we turned it around,…
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