All four of Chip Ganassi Racing’s entries in the Verizon IndyCar Series came out swinging in qualifying for the Rainguard Water Sealers 600 at Texas Motor Speedway (tonight, 8 p.m ET, NBCSN).
The Ganassi squad locked out the front row for the first time this year, with Kimball scoring the first pole of his IndyCar career and the 89th for Ganassi’s IndyCar operation.
Behind Kimball, the team’s other three entries served noticed that Ganassi might be the squad to beat this weekend. Scott Dixon makes his fourth appearance on the front row in 2017 and will start alongside Kimball in second. Tony Kanaan (fourth) and Max Chilton (sixth) enjoyed strong efforts in their own right to put all four Ganassi cars in the top six.
Polesitter Kimball was understandably elated with the result and offered thanks to his team for its support.
"(The team team has) had my back all year long through the good, the bad, the ugly. We haven’t really had much great (results) yet this year except for today, so it was nice to pay them back with this pole,” Kimball explained after qualifying.
Kimball has endured a run of tough luck in the first half of the season, highlighted by crashes on the opening lap of each of the first two races and an engine failure while battling for the lead in the 101st Indianapolis 500 presented by PennGrade MotorOil. He explained that scoring a pole is a great reward for the effort the entire team puts in.
“They work so hard, especially this race being the end of a string of so many races back-to-back, the fact that we’ve shown our resilience as well as we have is -- by getting this pole is an indication of how great a team I have working with me,” Kimball detailed.
However, as Scott Dixon explained, qualifying pace is not necessarily indicative of strong race pace. And, given the characteristics of Texas Motor Speedway, the winner can come from anywhere on the grid.
“I think (qualifying well) helps just keeping yourself out of trouble, but as we’ve seen in the past, if you’ve got a good car, you can come from the back here,” he said. “It’s definitely going to be about maintaining speed, probably for the last 20 laps of the stint,” he said of the impact of qualifying well.
Kanaan, too, kept his expectations muted, despite a strong showing in qualifying. “I feel like we put together a really good lap and I’m happy with where we are in terms of speed right now in the NTT Data car. We still have a little work to do though,” he revealed after qualifying.
The Rainguard Water Sealers 600 rolls off tonight at 8:00 p.m. ET on NBCSN.