In the midst of the huge success of his second season on IndyCar, Álex Palou still has some pending accounts at the individual level. In 2021 he will not be able to solve the victory in the oval, but the Spanish driver has lifted a great weight from his shoulders at a crucial moment for the championship by obtaining pole position for the Portland Grand Prix. Although he had already started from a pole and a second position in the two Texas races, in both cases his position was decided by the order in the general when qualifying was canceled, so this is his first official pole as an IndyCar driver.
The Spanish rider, who had never classified above third place to date, displayed a practically immaculate classification, completing a time in the same tenth in all three rounds: 58.7. After finishing second in the first round behind Felix Rosenqvist (which had the fastest time of the weekend), Palou led the second round en route to a Fast 6 in which his time with used soft tires, a 58,770, was almost identical to the 58,769 he had set with new tires. He registered it on his second and final attempt, after being third within a half-thousandth of Alexander Rossi on the first.
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Rossi’s final improvement was not enough, although it was enough to get his third front row of the year. Scott Dixon looked fit to snatch pole from his young teammate at Ganassi after setting the best time on the first attempt, but a braking pass at the chicane prevented him from aspiring to finally improve it. The three men who succeeded them did not figure in that equation, although they stayed close: great fourth position for Rosenqvist and fifth for Graham rahal, a typically poor classifier, both outperforming a Colton herta of which perhaps a little more was expected.
Rosenqvist was precisely the protagonist in the Fast 12 by taking the sixth final position that gave access to the fight for pole at the expense of his partner Pato O’Ward, leader of the contest, and that he will have to reload from a less ideal position, having been unhappy with his rhythm with new soft ones. Will come out three spots ahead of another potential candidate, Marcus Ericsson, who had led the first qualifying group, but did not know how to transfer that pace to the intermediate session. In between, they stood an Ed Jones who proves still capable of sporadic flashes of brilliance, and Oliver Askew, who posted an excellent first qualifying in Rahal’s third car to get ninth on the grid.
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Likewise, Max Chilton also surprised locals and strangers by placing Carlin’s car in eleventh position ahead of Sébastien Bourdais. All these surprises had in part the same root: the absolute debacle of Team Penske, without any of his four cars making it past the first round. Will Power and Scott McLaughlin stayed relatively close. No longer only compared to a Simon Pagenaud who signed an insane classification (he only surpassed Dalton Kellett), but to a Josef Newgarden who claimed to have no rhythm at all, and that he will start tomorrow from the 18th position in search of minimizing the damage with respect to the championship.
The American will start right in front of the rookie Callum Ilott, who benefited from other people’s engine problems to get 19th place on the grid with a decent lap in Juncos’ car. Mechanical circumstances will see Rinus VeeKay, Takuma Sato and Ryan Hunter-Reay come out to the back of the grid, all of them having suffered. a six-position penalty for using his fifth unit of the season early. The first two had already classified badly, but the icing on the cake was taken by a Hunter-Reay who could not even go out to mark a time.
The news, however, was and is far ahead. Palou is agency the second Spanish pole in IndyCar history, sixteen years after the one obtained by Oriol Servià in the Surfers Paradise event in 2005 within the Champ Car championship. At the same time, he gives an important blow to the table ahead of an event where he will have an unbeatable opportunity to obtain a third victory more than necessary. This is the only way to contain the Miuras who are lurking by snatching a title for which, for the moment, he has made more than enough merits. It still remains to survive the first chicane, the Portland roulette spins and the intangibles that have caused so much damage recently, but if it was necessary to see the works of a champion in the pilot from Sant Antoni de Vilamajor, they have been seen today.
INDYCAR PORTLAND GRAND PRIZE 2021 RANKING
* Sanctioned with six spots for using the fifth engine of the season.