Saturday afternoon’s qualifying session was the culmination of two full days of the fastest laps IndyCar drivers will turn for the entire season.
The top six drivers each were given four laps of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway all to themselves, one shot to set the best possible times.
Each driver that went out on track went faster than the last. Santino Ferrucci set his time, then he was bumped by Kyle Larson, and he was bumped by Alexander Rossi.
READ MORE: IndyCar Indy 500 – Full Qualifying Results
The trend continued right through to the end, with all three Penske drivers setting the fastest times of the afternoon in order.
Scott McLaughlin was the final driver to run, and thus earned pole by knocking his team-mate Will Power out of the top spot.
The Kiwi completed four laps at an average speed of 234.220 MPH, which makes his pace the fastest in the history of four-lap qualifying for the Indy 500.
McLaughlin’s speed was over 0.3 MPH faster than Power, partially aided by a spectacularly fortunate cloud that moved over the speedway right as he took the green flag.
Josef Newgarden earned the outside position on the front row, completing the first Team Penske front row lockout of the Indy 500 grid since 1988.
The team has showed absolute domination since the turbo boost pressures were turned up on Friday, and the front row show will surely be a point of pride for a long time.
Rossi, Larson, and Ferrucci will fill out the second row next weekend, and helped to give Chevrolet the first eight positions on the starting grid.
That remarkable achievement comes amidst a miniature crisis within the manufacturer that saw multiple drivers have plenum events that were felt as momentary hiccups in power.
Chevy activated their dyno centers around the world overnight to try to diagnose the problem, and there was only one such problem on Sunday’s running. Fortunately for everyone involved, the problem occurred in morning practice and not during the pole runs.
Behind the Fast Six, Rinus VeeKay Pato O’Ward and Felix Rosenqvist earned positions on the third row in order.
Rosenqvist was the highest qualifying Honda driver, with an average speed of 232.305 in the morning session.
The fourth row will be composed of Takuma Sato, Kyle Kirkwood, and Ryan Hunter-Reay, who all were not quite able to get the most out of their cars after earning a second day of qualifying due to their Saturday pace.
At the lower end of the spectrum, Nolan Siegel was the one driver that was bumped from the race.
The 19-year-old rookie went out for one last run as time expired, but was unable to hold his trimmed out car down on the racing line.
Siegel drifted up in the wall, crashing for the second time of the weekend. Luckily, the impact was much more gentle than the first, and his disappointment in missing the race was the biggest injury he suffered.
The 33 drivers now locked into the show will be back on track on Monday for a practice session in race trim, followed by a week of pageantry and traditions leading up to the Indy 500 next Sunday.
