Saturday afternoon’s knockout qualifying session was a stressful one for all 27 NTT IndyCar Series drivers.
The bumpy course, concrete walls, and traffic all combined to make for one of the most difficult qualifying sessions of the year.
Mastering all the challenges was Colton Herta, who put his Andretti Global Honda into pole position for the first time of the year.
READ MORE: IndyCar Detroit – Full Qualifying Results
Herta has been quick all weekend, and his great car setup helped to propel him above everyone else with a lap of 1:00.5475.
Alex Palou was second on the timesheets as he managed to continue a strong run that has lasted for over a year.
Josef Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin will fill out the second row, showing that Team Penske is a threat at every stop on the calendar.
Scott Dixon earned the fifth starting spot, but was still one of the five drivers that broke last year’s lap record during the course of the day.
Kyle Kirkwood rounded out the Fast 6. He pushed too hard during his final run and went into the runoff area.
An attempt at a quick flick-spin was not successful and he needed the AMR safety crew to give him a restart to get back to the pits.
Theo Pourchaire had the best qualifying run of his young IndyCar career, but just missed out on advancing to the Fast 6. He was knocked out as time expired and will start from seventh.
His Arrow McLaren team-mate Pato O’Ward had a frustrating second round, as he went long and stalled while setting up for a fast lap.
It appeared that the Mexican driver was trying to set a quick out lap in order to keep is position on track, but overheated brakes did not stand up to the pressure and he had to settle for 12th.
Alexander Rossi had the roughest showing of the Arrow McLaren trio, and was not able to match his team-mates’ pace. He was knocked out in the first round, and will start in 17th.
There was some concern that Scott Dixon would get a penalty in the first round for blocking, but race control deemed that there was simply not enough room on the race track and nothing that could be done.
As a result of the non-penalty, Graham Rahal was also knocked out in the first round and earned the 14th starting spot, which does not account for his engine change penalty.
Romain Grosjean stormed over to Santino Ferrucci’s pit box after he climbed out of the car, thinking that he was blocked as well.
Again, race control decided not to intervene, and Ferrucci was spared from having a second pit road altercation in a single day.
There is a short warm-up session Sunday morning, followed by the 100-lap Detroit Grand Prix at noon.
