Palou wins pole for Sunday’s IndyCar race at Mid-Ohio

INDIANAPOLIS — Alex Palou continues his tear through the IndyCar Series winning the pole for Sunday afternoon’s Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio.

The Chip Ganassi Racing driver turned a lap of 1 minute, 5.0215 seconds to claim his series-leading third pole position of the season. He’s won six of the nine races this year to build a 93-point lead over Kyle Kirkwood in the championship standings.

“Ever since I started with CGR, we’ve had great cars,” said Palou. “But we’ve always struggled with qualifying up front, so this year it has been phenomenal. The speed we have in the cars at every single racetrack we show up at is amazing.”

Arrow McLaren’s Christian Lundgaard will start second. Ganassi’s Kyffin Simpson will roll off third, the best starting position of his career. McLaren’s Nolan Siegel, Andretti Global’s Colton Herta and Rahal Letterman Lanigan rookie Louis Foster round out the first three rows.

Kirkwood, the only other driver to win a race this season besides Palou, will start seventh.

The struggles continue for Team Penske as all three cars failed to advance out of the first round of qualifying. Josef Newgarden is the highest qualifier at 18th with Scott McLaughlin 21st and Will Power 22nd.

Race coverage begins on Sunday at 1 p.m.