Palou Is Perfect Late En Route To Barber IndyCar Pole

Alex Palou celebrates the NTT P1 Award at Barber Motorsports Park. (Joe Skibinski/Penske Entertainment photo)

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – If Saturday’s Firestone Fast Six qualifying session was any indication, Alex Palou isn’t about to relinquish his control over the rest of the NTT IndyCar Series field anytime soon.

Palou hammered that point home Saturday afternoon in qualifying at Barber Motorsports Park, turning the pole time on his final flying lap around the 17-turn, 2.38-mile natural road course.

The pole changed hands four times in the final 40 seconds of the Fast Six, which was frenetic after being moved up due to the potential of incoming storms, but Palou was steely in his resolve.

A one-minute, 7.2918-second clip was enough for the seventh NTT P1 Award of Palou’s six-year Indy car career. It’s the first time he’s sat on the pole position at Barber, though he won the race in 2021.

“What an amazing day,” said Palou after climbing from his No. 10 HRC Honda. “This is such a special place for us; I got my first race win in IndyCar here four years ago … so now to finally have a pole here is an honor and very important.

“It was all super close at the end. My first lap wasn’t really good, and I was just hoping to get a perfect lap on the second one on the alternate (softer tire compound),” he added. “Everything ran amazing, and I got the balance I wanted, the balance we were looking for. I can’t wait for the race.”

Four of the previous six times Palou has qualified on the pole, the Chip Ganassi Racing driver has gone on to celebrate in victory lane.

How important does that make his track position for the 90-lap, 214-mile race Sunday?

“It’s definitely important. I think [at] every track, it’s important to have track position,” Palou noted. “It’s getting tough nowadays to keep your position, especially with the difference on tires and the different strategies that you can have [in] the race.

“But it helps to start up front, for sure. I’ll take it every day. But it doesn’t mean we’re going to finish there.”

Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin, the winner at Barber the last two years running, starts alongside Palou after a lap of 1:07.4387 in the No. 3 Good Ranchers Chevrolet.

Though it wasn’t quite enough in qualifying, McLaughlin tipped his team has worked through a lot of changes to his race car that have helped him feel more comfortable behind the wheel as the weekend has progressed.

“We tweaked it a lot; we’ve really gone back to more of the car (setup) that I liked from a couple years back, in some facets,” Mclaughlin explained. “But it’s not bad. The ‘Thirsty 3s’ have been working hard to get to a point where I feel good about what’s underneath me, and I think we’re there now.

“We didn’t have a great test here, so to come back and be on the front row is a great thing.”

Andretti Global’s Colton Herta starts third alongside all-time Indy car qualifying king Will Power, who earned his best starting spot of the year in fourth after three races outside the top 12 on the grid.

Dale Coyne Racing’s Rinus VeeKay and Arrow McLaren’s Nolan Siegel filled out the drivers who made it through all three knockout rounds and into the Fast Six. It’s Siegel’s best-ever Indy car qualifying effort.

Siegel’s two McLaren teammates, Christian Lundgaard and Pato O’Ward, start right behind him on row four as the first two drivers who failed to advance out of the second round of time trials.

Josef Newgarden, Kyffin Simpson, Marcus Armstrong, and Louis Foster roll off ninth through 12th, respectively, as the other drivers knocked out in round two.

Notables starting in the bottom half of the field that failed to make it past the first qualifying round Saturday include Alexander Rossi (15th), Long Beach winner Kyle Kirkwood (18th), Marcus Ericsson (23rd), and multi-time Barber runner-up Scott Dixon (26th), who went off in the gravel on his run.

Final warm-ups for NTT IndyCar Series teams are Sunday morning at 10 a.m. ET (9 a.m. CT). The race airs starting at 1:30 p.m. ET (12:30 p.m. CT), live on FOX, the IndyCar Radio Network, and SiriusXM IndyCar Nation, channel 218.