LEBANON, Tenn. – Kyle Kirkwood of Andretti Global scored his first oval IndyCar pole on Saturday at Nashville Superspeedway, but Alex Palou’s poor qualification performance has added some drama to Sunday’s Big Machine Music City Grand Prix.
Kirkwood won the pole with a two-lap average of 201.520 miles per hour in the No. 27 AutoNation Honda, edging Nashville’s own Josef Newgarden of Team Penske, who ran a two-lap average of 200.676 mph in the No. 2 Chevrolet.
“I’m stoked right now,” Kirkwood said. “It’s huge for our season to end off with a pole. I was a little upset we didn’t get a win or a pole (this season), and this is our final chance to do it, and we got it done.”
Felix Rosenqvist of Meyer-Shank Racing was third at 200.676 mph for two laps and Team Penske’s Will Power was fourth at 200.628 mph in the No. 12 Verizon Chevrolet.
Here is where it gets interesting.
Power enters the weekend second in points to Alex Palou, 33 points behind. Palou entered the weekend with a nine-grid position penalty for an unapproved engine change after the Sept. 1 race at The Milwaukee Mile.
Palou was the fastest in Saturday morning’s practice and was considered a contender for the pole.
Instead, he qualified 15th at 199.532 mph over two laps in the No. 10 DHL Honda. That plus the nine-position penalty means he will start 24th out of 27 cars in Sunday’s 2024 IndyCar Series season finale.
“We just lost the balance,” Palou said. “The balance was really good this morning on both primary (tires) and alternates. I don’t know if it was just a couple degrees difference that we had from the practice session and suddenly we just didn’t have the balance we needed to go flat out.
“I think we were very, very good this morning, leading in practice and feeling very comfortable. We just lost the balance of the car.
“As soon as we get it back, we’ll be right back at it.
“After leading in practice, it’s not what we wanted, not what we expected. We had a really good car in practice, so, we were actually thinking we were going to battle for the pole.
“But it didn’t work out that way.”
Palou still wins the championship if he finishes ninth or better in Sunday’s race.
Power’s plan is simple.
“We have to win the race, yes, unless he is out in the first lap and then it’s about where we have to finish and laps but my ultimately put the pressure on him,” Power said. “We have to win the race.
“But it may be difficult for Palou to get up to ninth because it’s a tough place to pass and you just don’t know when you’re back there, you can get collected, all the stuff that could happen.”
Up front, it was Kirkwood who could celebrate his second career IndyCar pole. His first pole was in the 2023 Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, a race he went on to win.
“It’s huge for our season. I was a little upset that we hadn’t gotten a pole yet this season. This was our final chance, and we got it done. Super happy. The No. 27 AutoNation Honda was absolutely on rails today. The Honda engine gave us great power, and we were good from the start. We were fast in practice. We rolled out of the trailer extremely well and made some minor changes for qualifying and was super happy with the car’s performance.’”
Newgarden is from Nashville and the front-row start puts the two-time Indianapolis 500 winner in a great position to win his home race for the first time in his career.
“I think it would be irresponsible not to be happy with it,” Newgarden said of his effort. “I think it’s good. I’m a little disappointed, though. I wanted to preface it with we are happy, but I just think we — you can always look back at it after the fact and say we could have done this a little bit different.
“I think we had one limiter hit at the end of the second lap, and I think that second lap was actually going to be faster. It was trending faster after off Turn Two.
“Now that it’s all over and you look at it, you go, I wonder if that would have — I think it could have been the difference.
“The team did a great job. The car was really great to drive. Honestly, it was amazing. So comfortable and very simple to put the laps together. Probably could have been more aggressive, too. The track cooled off a lot, gained a significant amount of grip just from practice.
“So yeah, I think we’re happy with it. We’ve got at least a good field of view to start the race, which is fantastic, and now we get to go to work on the race car and try and figure that piece of the puzzle out. Team Chevy has done a good job for us so far this weekend and we’re going to go try to go get a win.”