Rosenqvist narrowly claims pole at Texas

Felix Rosenqvist has taken pole position for the XPEL375 at Texas Motor Speedway, setting the fastest single run of the afternoon session.

Rosenqvist averaged 221.110 MPH over two flying laps, and was able to claim his second ever IndyCar pole award and his first on an oval.

He was the 11th car to run out of 27, proving that track evolution, both from changing temperatures and from rubber on the track, did not have any significant effect on his pole run.

The Swedish driver finished just 0.003 seconds quicker over those three miles than Scott McLaughlin, with the Kiwi nearly following up his maiden win with another pole.

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Takuma Sato and Will Power will start on the second row, while favorites Scott Dixon and Helio Castroneves will make up an all Honda-powered third row.

Pato O’Ward was only able to manage a 10th place qualifying effort, despite this being what he considers his home race and the fact that he took his maiden win at TMS last year.

The highest placed rookie was Devlin DeFrancesco, who put his Andretti Autosport Honda on the ninth row.

Jimmie Johnson qualified in 18th in his IndyCar oval debut, but was optimistic that his experience on the ovals will help him greatly in traffic for the race.

Graham Rahal logged the slowest couple of laps from the entire field, and will have to pass a lot of cars on the tricky track if he wants to salvage a good weekend.

There is one final warmup session later this evening, then the next time the drivers will be on track will be for the 248-lap race on midday Sunday.