Graham Rahal pulled off a tactical masterstroke to score his second pole position of the 2023 IndyCar season – after a six-year wait for the first – to beat Scott McLaughlin by just 0.0330s at Portland.
Rahal Letterman Lanigan’s Rahal was the only one of his team to make it out of Q1 with his team-mates starting outside the top 15, and he did it by going with a fresh set of hard tyres to set his fastest lap in the penultimate qualifying of the year.
He delivered a slower final lap and then pitted while he waited for the soft-shod runners to have a go at unseating him. They couldn’t and it means for the first time since 2009 he has two poles in a year following his pole on the Indianapolis road course last month – it’s also the team’s fourth of the season in a year of brilliant individual performances.
McLaughlin – who won from pole last year – was the only Penske driver in the Fast Six and missed out on pole by a hair, ahead of Colton Herta.
Herta hit the wall at Turn 1 in the morning practice but was the only Andretti car to make it past Q1 with Romain Grosjean (15th), Kyle Kirkwood (16th) and Devlin DeFrancesco (21st) struggling.
Scott Dixon beat title-contending team-mate Alex Palou as they qualified fourth and fifth respectively. A podium for Palou on Sunday would guarantee him the title a race early.
Pato O’Ward rounded out the Fast Six for Arrow McLaren as the series’ second-best qualifier behind Palou this year.
Will Power was the fastest driver to miss out on the Fast Six in seventh, ahead of Callum Ilott, who’s been fighting a Juncos Hollinger car that’s tough to qualify all year.
His ninth last week was his best of the year and he’s bettered that in Portland, four spots higher than his previous best road and street course qualifying of the year and six spots better than last year when he finished ninth from 14th.
Alexander Rossi was ninth, ahead of Marcus Ericsson rounding out the top 10 on his birthday.
The last two drivers in Q2 had issues, with Felix Rosenqvist in 11th spending the end of the session in the pits with an issue.
Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden qualified 12th after crashing early in Q2 at Turn 11, running wide and ploughing into a tyre barrier at Portland’s last turn.
Red flag comes out in Round 2 of qualifying after this incident for @josefnewgarden.