By David Morgan, Associate Editor
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Alex Palou has put the NTT IndyCar Series field on notice, winning the pole for Sunday’s running of the Children’s of Alabama Indy Grand Prix at Barber Motorsports Park.
A year after winning the pole and shellacking the field en route to the win on the 17-turn, 2.3-mile road course, Palou once again showed that the No. 10 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda will be the car to beat on Sunday with a lap of 1 minute, 6.234 seconds to take the pole for the second year in a row.
“Very happy, obviously. I was very happy with the car this morning in practice two compared to yesterday. Feel like yesterday we were missing a little bit of balance. Conditions today helped a ton.
“It was a very close qualifying. We just wanted to make sure once we’re in Fast Six, although we know we’re not going to have two sets of brand-new alternates, to try to go for pole, and we did.
“Yeah, happy. Hopefully future Alex is going to figure out how to balance against new alternates. Yeah, that’s an issue for tomorrow.”
He will be joined on the front row by Team Penske newcomer David Malukas as the only Chevrolet in the Firestone Fast Six.
“Very happy. Super happy. Obviously, we had the opportunity to go for pole. It was actually my call to make a big setup swing change going into the Fast Six. Overdid it. It was a bit on me.
“Very happy with everything. Yeah, front row for tomorrow is fantastic,” said Malukas.
“From practice one, practice two, our pace, on primary tires, but on reruns, we seem to have pace. Lap time was there. I think we’re in for a good race tomorrow.”
Graham Rahal equaled his best qualifying effort of the season with a third-place run, followed by Marcus Armstrong, Kyle Kirkwood, and Romain Grosjean to fill out the first three rows of the starting grid for the fourth race of the season.
“P3 in qualifying, great day for everyone on the Fifth Third Bank No. 15. The boys did a wonderful job,” said Rahal. “Everybody that puts a lot into this, it’s obviously great to have a result like this to be able to start up towards the front.”
The remainder of the top-10 went to Santino Ferrucci, Marcus Ericsson, Josef Newgarden, and Christian Lundgaard.
After a herculean effort by the whole of Team Penske to get his backup car prepared following his harrowing crash in practice, Scott McLaughlin will start 14th.
Qualifying was halted for one incident in the first round when Will Power’s No. 26 Andretti Global Honda suffered a brake failure and went into the tire barrier in Turn 5, relegating him to a 23rd place start on Sunday.
Power was able to climb from his car unhurt after the impact, but his team will have work overnight to get his car ready for the race with Power having work to do from the back of the field.
Teams will have a 30-minute warm-up session on Sunday morning at 10:05 am ET, with the 90-lap main event scheduled for 1:00 pm ET. Warmup will be televised on FOX Sports 2 with the race on FOX.
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