Alexander Rossi won the pole position for today’s Race #1 of the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix with a lap of 1 minute, 14.1989 seconds around the 2.35-mile Belle Isle Park street circuit.
The pole is the second of the season for Rossi, who converted his first into a dominant victory in April at Long Beach. It’s also the second pole for the Andretti Autosport driver at Belle Isle (Race #2, last year).
“We’ve been strong here for the last couple of years, and for one reason or another, we haven’t got the result [we were hoping for],” Rossi told NBC Sports. “So everyone is so highly motivated on the team right now to go out and execute and get what we feel like we’ve kinda given away the last couple of years.”
Josef Newgarden will start the race from second after posting a lap of 1 minute, 14.8272 seconds.
Belle Isle’s unique qualifying session saw the 22 cars split into two separate groups, which each had a 12-minute qualifying session. Group 1 set the even-numbered positions in the field, while Group 2 - being the faster group - set the odd-numbered positions, including the pole.
Scott Dixon (1:14:3995), who won last year’s Race #1 in Detroit, qualified third, while rookies Felix Rosenqvist (1:14:9984) and Colton Herta (1:14:8811) qualified fourth and fifth, respectively.
Will Power qualified a disappointing 12th, and Indianapolis 500 champion Simon Pagenaud will start this afternoon’s race from 13th. Since Detroit became the first race following the Indy 500 in 2012, no Indy winner has claimed a Detroit victory the following week.
Coverage of Race #1 for the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix begins at 3:00 p.m. ET on NBC.