Romain Grosjean continues Andretti Autosport’s qualifying dominance in 2023. (Photo: Riley Thompson | The Podium Finish)
Andretti Autosport continues to rule qualifying with Romain Grosjean capturing his second NTT P1 Pole Award of the season.
Grosjean will lead the 27-car grid to the green flag for Sunday’s Children’s of Alabama Indy Grand Prix at Barber Motorsports Park after setting a time of 65.8396 seconds (125.760 mph), besting Alex Palou by 0.0734 seconds.
“I’m really proud of our team. We struggled last year, but we became stronger,” said Grosjean. “Two poles and 100 percent in the (Firestone) Fast Six. Pretty exciting and have done a great job. We got 90 laps to keep that position, but I’m happy with everything we’ve got. Such a good atmosphere within the team as well and that’s awesome.”
In a season where Grosjean has been in contention for wins each round, he hopes tomorrow is the day he finally breaks through in the win column. With Kyle Kirkwood winning the most recent round at Long Beach to become the latest first-time winner, Grosjean hopes he is the next man to do so.
Following his pole, he credited his No. 28 Andretti Autosport camp for preparing a strong Honda that has showcased tremendous improvements over last year where he finished seventh.
The organization has been more competitive all across the board thus far in 2023, rivaling the pace prevalent with Ganassi, Penske and Arrow McLaren.
“I think we definitely found something at the end of last year, winter testing, and yeah, I just knew today that we had the car to fight for pole,” said Grosjean. “I think as a driver, you feel it very quickly. If you can drive the car fast, even if you make small mistakes, the lap time is still there, so you kind of know if you put it all together, it’s going to be good.
“Yes, we’ve got good momentum, we’ve got a good group of people, so it’s a car that they — I’ve got all the strengths of the car I loved in ’21 with all the strengths of the car I loved in ’22, and we’ve kind of put it together and that’s worked well for us.”
On the site of his maiden INDYCAR win in 2021, Palou continues to navigate the 2.3-mile road course extraordinary well. The former series champion hopes to make Sunday his third straight podium result in Alabama after finishing runner-up to Pato O’Ward a year ago.
“It was close as we knew it was going to be a pretty close qualifying. We left everything out there. We didn’t really have much and I bet (Grosjean’s) time was solid,” said Palou. “But happy standing on the front row tomorrow. I think the No. 10 Ridgeline Honda has been solid all weekend. We’ll prepare for tomorrow. Hopefully, we can fight in the race and it should be an interesting one.”
Alex Palou has yet to qualify outside the top-three at Barber. (Photo: Riley Thompson | The Podium Finish)
Defending race winner O’Ward put his No. 5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet up to third, the fastest out of the Chevrolet camp in qualifying. O’Ward explained he was definitely pushing his car to its limit, resulting in a moment where he got loose early in the session.
“It’s super tight and we knew it coming into qualifying. We had to find a little bit of something from practice because we weren’t quite there,” said O’Ward. “But the changes we made allowed us to fight in the Fast Six and I’m happy with that. Obviously, we can always be better, but it can always be worse as well.”
All drivers will have one more session to make final adjustments with a 30-minute warmup commencing on Sunday at noon ET on Peacock followed by the 90-lap race beginning its live coverage at 3 p.m. ET on NBC.
Pato O’Ward looks to regain the championship lead from Marcus Ericsson. (Photo: Riley Thompson | The Podium Finish)
2023 Children’s of Alabama Indy Grand Prix Starting Lineup
- 28 – Romain Grosjean
- 10 – Alex Palou
- 5 – Pato O’Ward
- 3 – Scott McLaughlin
- 9 – Scott Dixon
- 45 – Christian Lundgaard
- 2 – Josef Newgarden
- 6 – Felix Rosenqvist
- 21 – Rinus VeeKay
- 7 – Alexander Rossi
- 12 – Will Power
- 27 – Kyle Kirkwood
- 8 – Marcus Ericsson
- 26 – Colton Herta
- 77 – Callum Ilott
- 60 – Simon Pagenaud
- 18 – David Maulkas
- 29 – Devlin DeFrancesco
- 15 – Graham Rahal
- 20 – Conor Daly
- 06 – Helio Castroneves
- 78 – Agustin Canapino (R)
- 51 – Sting Ray Robb (R)
- 30 – Jack Harvey
- 55 – Benjamin Pedersen (R)
- 11 – Marcus Armstrong (R)
- 14 – Santino Ferrucci
