Ignoring the unflattering feelings of free practice and some recent results, as well as the dark clouds of his future in the short and medium term, Álex Palou has deployed a significant dose of talent at the right time to get a good and important starting position on the Nashville street circuit. The Spanish driver, who had only been able to finish ninth and twelfth in free practice, found enough speed and a bit of luck in the qualifying session for the Music City Grand Prix, and will start tomorrow’s race from fourth position.
In his first group, where there were five drivers with fastest times a priori, the chaos produced by two red flags played in his favor. The first, a Devlin DeFrancesco run off the track, set the stage for what happened in the second after Colton Herta crashed just seconds from the end, just as Palou had just completed his lap. On a track that was improving a lot after the electrical storms that forced to delay an hour and a half the startthe time was not extraordinary, but no one else of the big favorites managed to set a favorable time on soft.
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Thus, the final red dHe also kicked two coconuts like Alexander Rossi offside (eliminated due to mistakes by two of Andretti’s teammates) and Felix Rosenqvist. Although fortune that has been lacking on other occasions was on his side this time in the first group, Palou pulled the claws in the Fast 12 from the start, using two sets of soft tyres. His bet worked, since ended up leading the shootout by surpriseand although his tires were not at their peak in the final Fast 6, they retained enough grip to give him a fourth place that tastes like pole, having qualified ahead of all its direct rivals.
Pole position was too far away and it was predictably owned by Team Penske, although not without difficulties. Scott McLaughlin asserted his excellent pace After the morning session, he sent a warning by improving several other drivers’ times on soft on hard and ended up obtaining his second pole in IndyCar with a time of 1:14.555, which adds to the one obtained earlier in the year in St. Petersburg. Your partner Josef Newgarden played it to qualify in the final round with the hard tire and get an advantage for the start of the race at the cost of losing some positions, finally staying sixth. It would be others who would make pole position expensive for McLaughlin.
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Without Rossi and without Herta in between, the best version of Romain Grosjean reappeared to stay on the verge of his first pole of 2022. His best classification of the year also dated from St. Pete, but that was a fifth place; him tomorrow he will start in the front row ahead of a very solid Christian Lundgaard who showed that he was not bluffing in free practiceand who also came to occupy the provisional pole during a good part of the Fast 6. The Dane from the Rahal team, on a roll after reaching the podium last week at the Indy GP, thus manages to improve the fourth place from which he started the year spent in his debut career.
Without having such an outstanding car either, Duck O’Ward He also knew how to combine the misfortunes of others (such as that of his teammate Rosenqvist) with impeccable driving to place himself in fifth position. The Mexican agreed to the fight for pole after Will Power, the fastest man in the first round, lost his best time for causing a yellow flag that had directly affected the McLaren SP driver. The Australian will start eighth behind a David Malukas that he had the pace to get into the Fast 6 and could have done it if not for two small mistakes.
Graham Rahalninth on the grid, was the sensation of the second qualifying group by leaving out of the second round against the odds a Scott Dixon that it did accuse the problems that Ganassi had presented. It was even worse for Marcus Ericson, although the 18th place from which he will start is the same as last year before his victory. In the madness of the red flags of the first group, three drivers entered the Fast 12 without really having the pace for it: Rinus VeeKay, Jack Harvey and a Dalton Kellett who accidentally signed the best classification of his careerachieving what Kyle Kirkwood could not achieve in the ‘normal’ group by a little.
Further back, Simona de Silvestro did not complete a full lap due to the red flags, and the bad position of Hélio Castroneves confirmed his last place for tomorrow due to a six-place penalty for mounting the fifth engine early. With many drivers out of position, tomorrow’s race could have major implications for many contenders. Among the six direct candidates for the title, the two with the fewest points (O’Ward and Palou) are the ones that come out the highest, but McLaughlin isn’t that far off in the standings either, and a win could put him back in contention if the circumstances are right. The rain threatens to make an appearance again tomorrow, and perhaps that will end up altering things even more…
2022 MUSIC CITY GRAND PRIX CLASSIFICATION – NASHVILLE
The race will be broadcast on Sunday on Movistar Deportes 2 from 9:20 p.m. with comments from Raúl Benito and Cristóbal Rosaleny.