Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Will Power captures his fourth pole position at Indy road course

bDmUQ2jjQMdr
Will Power claims pole position for Saturday's IndyCar Grand Prix at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and explains what his mindset will be when he leads the field to green.

Will Power captured his fourth pole position for the IndyCar GMR Grand Prix on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, bumping Jack Harvey off the top spot in qualifying Friday as the final round ended.

Harvey, who narrowly missed the first pole position of his NTT IndyCar Series career, will start a career-best second in Saturday’s race (noon ET, NBC), followed by Colton Herta, Graham Rahal, rookie Oliver Askew and Josef Newgarden.

Power told NBCSN pit reporter Marty Snider that he left “nothing on the table on that lap. I knew Harvey had a pretty good time up there, so we put our best set on for the last run and just gave it my all. And fortunately, it was enough. But man, the heat. I just want to jump in an ice bath right now, I’m so bloody hot.”

RESULTS: Click here to see the qualifying speeds at Indy

Power has won the previous three times he started from the GMR Grand Prix pole position in 2015, ’17, and ’18.

“You’ve got to be smart, get through that first corner,” the Team Penske driver said. “I think being on pole is definitely a good spot. You’re probably going to be out of a bit of harm’s way, but obviously a lot of guys hungry behind you trying to gain some positions.”

Harvey improved a spot from last year’s third-place starting spot for Meyer Shank Racing.

“Just Will Power doing Will Power things,” Harvey told NBCSN pit reporter Dave Burns. “I don’t know how else to describe it. Everyone at Meyer Shank is working their butts off to be competitive.”

It’s the 58th IndyCar pole of Power’s career and his 12th consecutive season with at least one pole position. He is nine behind Mario Andretti for the all-time record.

After coming up nearly four 10ths of a second behind Power, Herta said it was “almost heart breaking. You qualify third and have (that) gap, and it’s ‘Oh man.’”

There were no drivers from Andretti Autosport and Chip Ganassi Racing who reached the Fast Six final round of qualifying as several big names failed to advance from the second round.

Scott Dixon just missed making the final round by five hundreths of a second.

“Definitely pretty close,” the five-time IndyCar series champion said. “A lot of guys there in that last session that went quickly that we probably didn’t expect to, so it’ll definitely make for an interesting race tomorrow.”

Defending race winner Simon Pagenaud also will be coming from deep in the field after qualifying 20th of 26 cars.