Palou’s Pole, RLL’s Special Day In Indy GP Qualifying
(Photo by Chris Owens/Penske Entertainment)
By Dennis Krause
Alex Palou winning the pole for Saturday’s Sonsio Grand Prix at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course was not unexpected.
The three-time and two-time reigning NTT INDYCAR SERIES champion blitzed the 14-turn, 2.439-mile road course and the 27-car field with a lap of 1:09.3417 in his No. 10 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda despite locking up his tires on his previous lap in qualifying.
“Yeah, amazing. It's been a busy day. Really fun day. Lots of activities on track and being here, again, it feels sweet,” said Palou, who was a whopping .4099 of a second quicker than runner-up Graham Rahal.
“The car has been really, really fast all day, but especially qualifying. Qualifying was really, really good. I had a couple of moments there locking a couple of tires, especially on Fast Six. That was big.
“I've been struggling. I think everybody has been struggling a little bit unlocking. I think the track grip is super high. It gives you a lot of confidence, so we start pushing, pushing, pushing, but we get to a point where the tire says no, which makes it really fun to drive, but then suddenly you get moments like that where, yeah, the tiredoesn't like it. We're going to have to use that tire tomorrow, so it's going to be exciting.”
(Photo by Chris Jones/Penske Entertainment
Perhaps more impressive than Palou’s pole-winning lap was the overall performance of Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing in claiming three positions in the top-five, with Graham Rahal second, rookie and reigning INDY NXT champion Louis Foster third and Devlin DeFrancesco fifth. The three RLL drivers showed speed in both of the day’s practice sessions and were able to back it up in qualifying.
“It's a huge day for us,” said Rahal, who will be making his first front row start of the season and second on the IMS road course. “Really happy for these two guys (Foster, DeFrancesco) as well as everybody on our organization. It's been a lot of hard work. I think coming into this weekend we expected to be good here, but I don't think we unloaded necessarily in a great place this morning. I don’t know, we were just battling the rear of the cars. It's cool, though, so it's hard to tell conditions-wise as things change throughout the day.
“We battled hard today. I thought we made a lot of improvements. There's a lot of great feedback between all three of us to try to figure out the right steps forward as we went into qualifying. You know, we were all just standing out there talking. I wish we could understand what works here that we could take to everywhere else because it would certainly be nice to have this confidence going to any track. We're not going to complain.
“Huge, huge, huge deal for us to have three cars in the top five,” continued Rahal. “Massive. For Honda, to do what they did and just so many cars, so competitive. I'm excited for tomorrow.
“Obviously, Alex, I don't know what we have to do to beat him. I don't know if anybody does. We're going to give it our A effort. If there's one place I feel confident that we've run up front a lot, it's here. It would be nice to get over that hump and get a win for sure.”
(Photo by Chris Jones/Penske Entertainment)
Asked if the team’s performance in qualifying was a redemption for RLL President Jay Frye, who was hired by the team after being fired from his similar position with INDYCAR, Rahal demurred.
“Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I'm sure he feels good, but I do think in many respects Jay has already added an element to our team that was not present for a while. Just leadership, kind of that go-getter mentality.
“It's been a lot of fun for me to work with Jay. We had a team meeting the other day, kind of a pep talk from him. As long as I've been at RLL, we've never had somebody other than my dad (Bobby) do that, and I've been here a long time.
“It was great to see. The changes are going to happen. They're going to take alittle bit of time, but this certainly feels good. It feels good. It feels good to our teams.
“Our mechanics have been busting their tails, particularly with Takuma (Sato’s) car getting rebuilt for the 500. If you don’t believe this, it puts a huge smile on everybody's face tonight. I think it's a special day for us.”
(Photo by Mike Young/Penske Entertainment)
New for Saturday’s race, teams will have to use both the primary black and alternate red tire two times during the race instead of just once. After qualifying, Palou was unsure what the impact of the new requirement is going to be.
“I don't know. Honestly I have no idea. I think it's one of -- I don't know. It's going to make it interesting in a way of like if the primary or the hard tire is bad or the red tire is bad, bad in a way of not being fast and having more deg, you're just going to have to do it again, and everybody is going to go through that.
“I think all the drivers they have a preference on which tire to run always, and tomorrow you cannot have that preference. You need to be good. You need to be fast on both of them.
“So I don't know what's that going to do for the race. Hopefully it's going to mix up a little bit of things. Not on our end, hopefully. I have hopes that it's going to make thestrategies a bit crazier.”
If Palou is able to pull off a win tomorrow, it would be back-to-back sweeps in both the Sonsio Grand Prix as well as this season.
“That would be very nice. I don't know if many people would be happy with that. Yeah, that's what I would like.”
Dennis Krause has spent decades covering all forms of motorsports, including over 40 Indianapolis 500s, with stints at WIBA Radio, PIT PASS - Radio’s Premier Motorsports Magazine and Motorsports Minute. Follow him on X @DennisKrause500 or motorsportsminute.bluesky.social or motorsportsminute on Threads or MotorsportsMinute+ on Facebook.