Rosenqvist: McLaren at a “whole different confidence level”

Rosenqvist claimed his fourth pole IndyCar pole and his second straight at Texas, leading his teammates Alexander Rossi and Pato O’Ward in a McLaren 1-3-5.

“Great car, man,” said the elated Swede. “Those Arrow McLarens are real weapons today. I think we just built from last year.”

Because oval qualifying is run in championship order, and Rosenqvist had a poor opening race to the season, bumped into the wall on the opening lap at St. Petersburg, he was 10^th car to run. Theories varied as to how much of a help that was because although he got to run in cooler track conditions, the air is also thinner in the hotter runs, creating less drag.

Whatever the case, the upshot was that Rosenqvist was the only driver to clock two laps of the 1.5-mile oval at 220mph. By contrast, Rossi and O’Ward hit the track in 25^th and 27^th. They, along with Scott Dixon and Will Power appeared the only drivers likely to be a threat for pole. Dixon was second fastest and will join Rosenqvist on the front row, but Power had too short a top gear for the track conditions, and twice he bounced off the rev limiter on his second lap. That pulled his average down, so that he will start tomorrow’s race only eighth.

“Maybe it was a good thing to start out early, I don’t know,” shrugged Rosenqvist. “The track kind of warmed up. We’ll take it.

“Our team and our partners have done a phenomenal job. I think we’ve always been good here but this is a whole different confidence level compared with last year. So let’s try to wrap it up tomorrow…

“It was an amazing quali. I don’t think we could have done much better than that.”