Scott McLaughlin will start ninth for tomorrow’s Grand Prix of Long Beach while Scott Dixon will come from 16th, after failing to make it out of the first round of qualifying.
Q1
McLaughlin set a time early in the session to sit at the top of the leader board briefly before Herta put together a time on the harder tyres to move to the top four-tenths ahead of the time McLaughlin had set.
With a minute remaining, McLaughlin was the first to beat the lap record set in 2017, though Alexander Rossi and Colton Herta would soon improve the record further.
Marcus Ericson bumped Graham Rahal out of the top six to move on to the fast 12 while Rahal will start 13th.
After a tough start to the weekend, that saw two practice crashes, the first of which left him with a broken bone in his hand, Jimmie Johnson wouldn’t move through to the next round after impeding Rahal early on in the session
Q2
The second session saw a number of big names bumped out of the top six, including Helio Castroneves and Scott Dixon, who didn’t get a strong enough lap put together on the final run.
Fast 12
After the first run, McLaughlin sat second a tenth of a second slower than Herta who again topped the leaderboard.
On his second run, McLaughlin struggled to find a gap on track hampering the start of his final run as he had a moment with Erricson who appeared to be on a fast lap, pulling to the side to let him through, before Ericsson parked McLaughlin wide as he moved back ahead.
After the session race control confirmed there was an incident involving multiple cars under investigation, leaving questions around who would advance to the final round of qualifying, though it would ultimately be resolved without further action.
McLaughlin sat ninth at the end of the session which will be where he starts the race tomorrow
Fast 6
Herta who has been strong so far this weekend, left his run in the Fast 6 until late in the session, jumping straight to the top of the timesheets.
Romain Grosjean sat second with just second remaining in the session, when he found himself in the tyre barrier, after tapping the wall in turn four, while on another strong lap, bringing out the red flag.
Race control gave everyone except Grosjean the opportunity to go out for one more fast lap, Rosenqvist and Rossi were the only two to take the opportunity, though neither would change their grid position.
As a result of bringing out the red flag, Grosjean lost his quick lap dropping him to sixth.
The race will get underway at 7 am Monday morning.
Qualifying Results:
- Colton Herta
- Josef Newgarden
- Alex Palou
- Felix Roseqvist
- Alexander Rossi
- Romain Grosjean
- Will power
- Marcus Ericsson
- Scott McLaughlin
- Simon Pagenaud
- Pato O’Ward
- Kyle Kirkwood
- Graham Rahal
- Helio Castroneves
- Rinus Veekay
- Scott Dixon
- Devlin Defrancesco
- Conor Daly
- David Malukas
- Christian Lundgaard
- Jack Harvey
- Callum Ilott
- Takuma Sato
- Dalton Kellett
- Jimmie Johnson
- Tatiana Calderon
Main image: Chris Jones