Long Beach IndyCar: Herta takes pole with new lap record

Alexander Rossi laid down the first marker in the third segment of qualifying with 66.0, his closest opponent being Josef Newgarden and Felix Rosenqvist after their first runs.

Alex Palou then delivered a 65.8667sec lap to go top, before then Herta slammed in a 65.3095 to claim the qualifying track record by nine-tenths of a second, with Grosjean 0.1960sec behind him.

Attempting to usurp his teammate, Grosjean grazed a wall with his left-rear on the run to Turn 5, breaking a toelink which sent him crabbing hard into the tire wall on the outside of the corner.

That cost him his best time, dropping him to sixth, and promoting Newgarden to the front row ahead of Palou.

With two seconds of guaranteed time remaining, IndyCar’s rule allowing cars one final flyer kicked in. Only Rosenqvist and Rossi took the option, but both failed to improve – Rossi slid into the Turn 1 run-off, and Rosenqvist was unable to edge ahead of anyone, leaving him to start in fourth.

In Q2, Palou was somewhat of an outlier by going straight onto used reds from the start of the session but his first effort left him only eighth fastest. Herta was fastest on the primaries on 65.9478sec, ahead of Scott McLaughlin, Simon Pagenaud, Grosjean and Marcus Ericsson.

First flyers on fresh reds came from Newgarden and Will Power, springing into the top two spots with 65.8s. Then Rosenqvist and Herta deposed both of them, and Herta kept improving delivering a 65.4057, and his closest challenger was teammate Rossi.

Rosenqvist, Palou, Newgarden and Grosjean also got through, but Power – only 0.0001sec behind Grosjean – called in the fact that got backed up following Pato O’Ward at the hairpin, but believing O’Ward had also been backed up.

Josef Newgarden, Team