Felix Rosenqvist takes pole at Long Beach, Pourchaire 22nd

The dream start to the season continues for Felix Rosenqvist (Meyer Shank), who won pole position for the Long Beach Grand Prix this Saturday, ahead of Will Power (Penske).

Published on 20/04/2024 à 23:25

⁰ View comments)

Felix Rosenqvist takes pole at Long Beach, Pourchaire 22nd

Rosenqvist beat the double champion IndyCar by four thousandths of a second, to claim a first pole position this season. The Swede, who joined Meyer Shank Racing this year after several lackluster seasons at McLaren, continues to impress after two good qualifications, in St. Petersburg and on the Thermal Club track. For Power, this first row is an excellent result after a particularly difficult free practice session at the start of the day in California.

Josef Newgarden (Penske) and Colton Herta (Andretti) will start tomorrow from the second row of the grid, ahead of Marcus Ericsson (Andretti) and Alex Palou (Ganassi). The Spaniard, reigning champion, is the best placed driver in the Chip Ganassi Racing armada, which manages to put three of its drivers in the top 10 of the grid.

Poleman and winner of the event in 2023, Kyle Kirkwood (Andretti) had to settle for tenth position on the starting grid, having failed to advance to Q3, which brings together the six best times from Q2.

The French in the second half of the grid

Theo Pourchaire was able to participate in an IndyCar qualifying session for the first time, and the McLaren driver will ultimately start 22nd on the starting grid. The champion F2 in title had nevertheless managed to slip into the top 6 of his Q1 group two minutes from the checkered flag, but he slipped in the ranking following the successive improvements of his opponents.

Romain Grosjean must settle for 16th position, after an uneven start to the weekend. Although he managed to finish seventh in EL2 this morning, he suffered a mechanical problem during the first session this Friday, preventing him from running on the soft tires, which were very important during the qualifying session. There is one practice session left before tomorrow's race to try to rectify the situation for Grosjean, Pourchaire and the others.