Scott McLaughlin is looking to continue his strong start to the season, qualifying for tomorrow’s race at Texas Motor Speedway second.
Scott Dixon will start fifth after also putting together a strong run in qualifying.
Each car had two laps on track, with the average speed over the laps used to determine the starting order for tomorrow’s race, the championship standings set the order cars would head out on track, with the current leader heading out last.
Alexander Rossi who is further down the championship order after a difficult race at St Petersberg was the first driver to set a 220 mph average speed.
Though it was soon eclipsed by Felix Rosenqvist who set a 221 mph, which would stand as the fastest, putting him on pole for tomorrow’s race.
Scott Dixon put together two strong laps to have an average speed of 221.01 putting him third with a few cars still to set their laps, dropping to fifth after the final runs.
“Unless your P1 you always feel like you could’ve done something a little bit better. The car felt good but I think we probably missed a little bit on gear, and then also on the downforce level, I think we scrubbed a bit too much,” Dixon said after his run.
“It’s tight, it’s really hard especially when you’ve got the big group sessions to start with, trying to find where you need to be on downforce is really hard.”
In his first oval track qualifying session, Romain Grosjean put together a time that would see him qualify just outside the top ten.
After winning the opening race of the season, putting him in the lead of the championship, McLaughlin was the last car to head out for a qualifying run.
Despite being the first time he has completed qualifying at the track, as last year’s race saw the grid set by points, McLaughlin put together two strong laps with an average speed of 221.096 to qualify second for tomorrow morning’s race less than a tenth of a second shy of Rosenqvist’s pole-winning speed.
The IndyCar series will be out on track for the second race of the season tomorrow morning with coverage starting at 5.30 am.
Main image: Team Penske
