Alex Palou will take Pole Position at the Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio, his third this season and ninth in his career. The Reigning Champion talked about his “interesting” qualifying day at the Mid-Ohio Sport Car Course.
Palou will start on pole with Arrow McLaren’s Christian Lundgaard will start second with Palou’s teammate, Kyffin Simpson, in third.
Words with Power
Before qualifying, Will Power had some words for Palou after Practice 2. Power felt that Palou was not giving him space to get a clean lap in during the practice session. Power used the time in between Practice 2 and Qualifying to have a conversation with Palou.
When asked about his qualifying run, the Spaniard answered, “Yeah, it was great. Really fast car since practice one. A good exchange with Power after practice 2.”
When asked further about his conversation with Power, Palou continued, “He gave me some compliments. No, it was all good. He was frustrated about traffic. Yeah, it wasn’t too bad.”
The Chip Ganassi Racing driver brought back the conversation to qualifying, saying “Yeah, then qualifying was interesting. We had a ton of speed in Q1.”
“Then Q2 we struggled a little bit with the balance and also speed-wise. We’re still in and we’re still like P3 or P4 but we were still two tenths off, so we wanted to go aggressive. We went on a brand new set of softs for Fast Six instead of keeping it for the race, like I think three guys did it, to try and get that pole, and it worked out.”
A game of strategy
The Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course has seen yellow being thrown in three out of the four previous IndyCar races. When asked about how he would start this race with this fact, he noted how different strategies is “why probably we don’t see as many cautions“.
“Yeah, you try and always expect no yellows or no incidents, try and expect a clean start and just go for it, if then suddenly there’s yellows or not. But yeah, I would say the last six races there’s been a yellow in the first two or three laps, so it’s going to make it interesting. I think once it gets going and with the different strategies, that’s why probably we don’t see as many cautions, which I think is a good thing because we’re going to see like two, three different strategies or maybe one less stop, one more stop, like just different fuel mileages, and that’s when you start seeing overtakes and just good track action happening.”
In any case, Palou hopes to keep and run with his lead, but he knows “it’s not always a given”.
“Yeah, I think it’s going to be a good race, a good show. But yeah, from my standpoint, you just go and try and keep the lead, which is number one. It’s not always a given. And try and run your rhythm, take care of the tires and stuff like that.”
