2026 OnlyBulls Grand Prix of Portland

One Lap Longer: Palou Overcuts Rosenqvist for a Third Portland Win

The OnlyBulls Grand Prix of Portland was decided by a single lap of fuel, and by a tire nobody had trusted until the moment it mattered.

Alex Palou ran one lap deeper than Felix Rosenqvist into the first round of pit stops on Sunday, emerged in front and never gave the position back, taking his sixth win of the 2026 NTT IndyCar Series season and the 25th of his career by 4.1167 seconds. It was his third victory at Portland International Raceway, moving him alongside Will Power as the only active drivers to have won three times at the 12-turn, 1.964-mile road course — and he did it with Power finishing third behind him.

Rosenqvist led the first 30 laps from his first Portland pole and had the race in hand for most of that stretch, holding Marcus Ericsson at roughly eight tenths through the opening dozen laps and stretching the margin to 1.5281 seconds by Lap 23 in the No. 60 SiriusXM Meyer Shank Racing Honda. Then Ericsson pitted on Lap 24, and the shape of the race changed.

"You risk it to close the gap," Palou said. "As soon as Marcus pitted, just go on the back of his car and just try and make him either pit or make a mistake, or in case he was going to pit before us, just to make sure that we're going to have one clean lap to go for it."

The timing sheets track exactly that. Palou was 1.8246 seconds adrift on Lap 25 in the No. 10 DHL Chip Ganassi Racing Honda, 0.9163 back by Lap 28 and within 0.6790 by Lap 30. Rosenqvist pitted from the lead on Lap 31. Palou stayed out one more.

"He just drove better, to be honest. Not a lot quicker, but he was a little bit quicker, especially on the blacks," Rosenqvist said. "That first stint he outsmarted us, did one lap longer. I didn't know he did that, so maybe we need to work on communication."

Two things compounded on that exchange. Rosenqvist lost time getting away from his pit box, which sits immediately behind Mick Schumacher's on pit lane. "I got kind of twisted up leaving my box because I was so close to the Schumacher crew," he said. "I think between the overcut and that, we kind of lost the position."

Strategist Barry Wanser said the plan was built around going longer than the pole sitter. "I mean, we had to do something different than Felix. We had to go longer than him," Wanser said. "It takes a lot of performance by Alex and certainly the Honda engine to give us the fuel mileage to jump in one more and do the overcut. That helped us. We had a pretty smooth pit stop and got the jump there."

What followed was the stint that settled the afternoon, and it came on a compound the paddock had spent two days trying to read. Palou asked for primaries at his first stop. He got alternates instead.

"To be clear, he asked to have blacks for the second," Wanser said.

"I did," Palou said. "They asked me, Do you want reds or blacks? I said, Blacks. Then they said, We're going to put reds. I was like, All right."

The alternates held up far better than expected. Palou's 1:00.3590 on Lap 37, the fastest lap by any race leader, came three laps into that run, and by Lap 40 he led Rosenqvist by 4.9368 seconds. By Lap 50 the margin was 7.6077.

"I think pretty much nobody expected those reds and soft tires to be that fast and to be that good, especially so many laps," Palou said. When Wanser came on the radio asking for eight more laps out of the set, Palou had been bracing for worse. "In my mind, when I was driving, I thought that I had to do another 15. So when he said another eight, I was like, Oh, that's good. We're going to make it happen."

Rosenqvist stayed on primaries through his second stint before switching to alternates just past halfway, and the pace came back to him — the gap fell from 6.7749 seconds at the Lap 55 midpoint to 1.1791 by Lap 80. But he was forced to stop on Lap 81, a lap before Palou, and the cycle went against him a second time. Power inherited the lead when Palou stopped on Lap 82, ran to Lap 87, and Palou emerged in front for the final time with a 3.3658-second cushion that he managed out to the flag.

Power's afternoon carried its own frustration in the No. 26 TWG AI Andretti Global Honda. He had saved a set of alternates for the closing stint, a call he described as the team's rather than his own, and lost time in the middle of the race after missing a pit instruction. "I heard something, I just didn't hear it clear enough," he said. "I believe I missed it, which cost us quite a bit of time." He put the loss at roughly three seconds stuck behind a lapped car, and was more enthusiastic about what he had waiting at the end: "Blacks are really hard to hang on to. They weren't easy to drive. The reds were like a dream. Really forgiving."

There were nine lead changes among four drivers, but only Palou, Rosenqvist, Josef Newgarden and Power ever headed the field, and the last two did so entirely through pit sequences. Newgarden led 11 laps across two stretches and recovered to eighth in the No. 2 Astemo Team Penske Chevrolet after starting 14th, having been one of six drivers who pitted under the race's only caution.

That yellow came on Lap 7, when Graham Rahal spun in Turn 11 and ran off course in Turn 12 in the No. 15 MiJack Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda. He continued, but the two-lap interruption was the entire caution total for the day — 108 of 110 laps ran green, with 119 total passes and 94 for position.

Christian Lundgaard produced the drive of the race from the back. Penalized in qualifying for interference and left classified 25th, he took ninth in the No. 7 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet for the day's largest gain at 16 positions, and posted the fastest Turn 1 section time of the race along the way. Kyle Kirkwood was fifth and Ericsson sixth, giving Andretti Global three cars in the top six, while Scott McLaughlin came from 13th to seventh in the No. 3 Sonsio Vehicle Protection Team Penske Chevrolet.

Ericsson's 1:00.3070 on Lap 5, set while running second before the caution, stood as the race's fastest lap for the remaining 105 laps.

Marcus Armstrong's weekend ended on Lap 33. The New Zealander had run the No. 66 OnlyBulls Meyer Shank Racing Honda into the top 10 from 20th on the grid before an engine failure ended it — his third in four races, according to the team.

"I just feel bad for myself and for the team, really. We've put in so much work you can't believe it," Armstrong said. "We were having such a great weekend."

Traffic dominated the post-race conversation. Rosenqvist and Power both argued the series needs to change how lapped cars are handled, with Rosenqvist saying it was "kind of time for us as a series to grow up and not have the lapped car situation" and Power calling the current approach a holdover from the 1970s. Wanser offered the counterargument. "As long as you are battling to stay on the lead lap, even when you come a lap down, if you're not a lap down to the entire field, you're not blue flag eligible," he said. "You have the right to be there and fight."

Palou, who benefited from exactly that situation at Portland a year ago when traffic held up the cars ahead of him, sided with consistency over change. "I think as long as we keep it consistent, it's the same for everyone," he said.

Nineteen cars finished on the lead lap, a figure Wanser pointed to as evidence of how tightly the field is packed. David Malukas served a two-position penalty for blocking after a Lap 2 incident with Alexander Rossi and came home 12th in the No. 12 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet, a costly afternoon for a driver who arrived second in the standings and leaves third.

Palou now holds 510 points, 110 clear of Kirkwood and 118 ahead of Malukas with five races remaining. He was unwilling to treat the gap as decisive.

"There's still a lot of points to play. It was important to maximize," he said. "The same way that in the last two weekends we got a huge gap, someone else can do the exact same thing. So we need to keep on pushing."

Conditions were warm and stable throughout, with the ambient temperature at 74 degrees under sunny skies and the track at 123 degrees, according to Firestone engineers, at the time Todd Ault, executive chairman and founder of OnlyBulls, gave the command to start engines. Palou completed the 110 laps in 1:55:03.4235 at an average speed of 112.661 mph.

The series heads to Canada next weekend for the inaugural Ontario Honda Dealers Indy at Markham, a circuit new to the entire field.

"We have no references," Palou said. "Obviously we have nowadays great tools with the simulator. At Honda, they do an incredible job for us. But it's never the same as knowing the track, knowing every bump, knowing how much you can push the car."

Newgarden Quickest in Portland Warm-Up as the Weekend's Tire Question Goes Unresolved

Josef Newgarden delivered the only lap under 59 seconds in Sunday morning's final practice at Portland International Raceway, a session that gave teams their last look at a Firestone tire choice nobody has been willing to call.

Newgarden's 58.7183 in the No. 2 Astemo Team Penske Chevrolet led the 30-minute warm-up for the OnlyBulls Grand Prix of Portland by 0.3611 of a second over Rinus VeeKay, a substantial margin in a weekend that has otherwise been measured in hundredths. It was Newgarden's best lap of the event and moved him to sixth on the combined practice sheet, useful evidence of speed in a car that qualified 15th after a drive-through penalty for a pit lane speed violation compromised his run in Group 1.

VeeKay was second at 59.0794 in the No. 76 Juncos Hollinger Racing Chevrolet, with Scott Dixon third at 59.0963 in the No. 9 PNC Bank Chip Ganassi Racing Honda. Dennis Hauger continued a weekend that has improved with each session, taking fourth at 59.1623 in the No. 19 Ault Block Chain Dale Coyne Racing Honda — the rookie's best lap of the event after he recorded no laps at all in Practice 1.

Pole winner Felix Rosenqvist was sixth at 59.2532 in the No. 60 SiriusXM Meyer Shank Racing Honda and front-row starter Alex Palou seventh at 59.2741 in the No. 10 DHL Chip Ganassi Racing Honda, with David Malukas fifth in between them. Marcus Armstrong, whose 58.2981 in Practice 2 still stands as the quickest lap anyone has managed all weekend, was 13th.

No driver bettered their qualifying time. Only Newgarden and Hauger set weekend-best laps in the session; the other 23 entries had gone quicker on Friday or Saturday.

The session's purpose, though, was less about the order than about what the alternate compound does over a run. Palou had made clear Saturday evening that the answer was genuinely unknown across the paddock, with alternates producing sharply better lap times in qualifying than they had in opening practice.

"I don't know if they're going to make it, if they're going to be better than the primaries or not," Palou said. "We're going to see that in warm-up, although the conditions are going to be better than the race. I don't think it's going to be easy to manage those soft tires, but they could be faster. It could be over a stint a better tire. I think everybody's just asking the same questions."

Asked for his own view, Rosenqvist offered none. "Probably retweet Alex," he said. "No one knows, so we'll see."

Conditions Sunday morning were the mildest of the weekend and, as Palou anticipated, unrepresentative of what the race will bring. The ambient temperature stood at 66 degrees with relative humidity at 64 percent under fair skies, and Firestone engineers measured the track at 88.2 degrees — more than 50 degrees cooler than Saturday afternoon's qualifying surface.

Pato O'Ward was 25th at 1:00.1456 in the No. 5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet, one of two drivers over the minute alongside teammate Nolan Siegel. Graham Rahal ran 15 laps, the fewest in the field, in the No. 15 MiJack Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda. The field completed 627 laps, bringing the weekend total across all sessions to 1,665.

Palou expects the compressed pace that has defined every session to push teams away from conventional strategy well before the halfway point.

"The race pace is really fast because you cannot really try and save tires or fuel because someone else is at the same pace as you and is going to overtake you," he said. "Then that creates a lot of strategy shake-up, like lap 20, 30. Everybody just starts going at different paces and it makes for a really entertaining race."

Rosenqvist, who starts from his first Portland pole, is planning for a race he cannot simply control from the front.

"We probably have to cover ourselves more. Hopefully get clean air," he said. "That was always a key here in Portland."

The OnlyBulls Grand Prix of Portland runs 110 laps and 216.04 miles, with the green flag scheduled for 1:27 p.m. local on FOX.

Rosenqvist Edges Palou by 0.0184 for a Portland Pole He Calls Overdue

Felix Rosenqvist has been fast at Portland International Raceway for most of a decade without ever leaving it with the best starting spot. That ended Saturday afternoon, and it took two hundredths of a second.

Rosenqvist's 58.4828 in the No. 60 SiriusXM Meyer Shank Racing Honda claimed the NTT P1 Award for the OnlyBulls Grand Prix of Portland, holding off Alex Palou by 0.0184 of a second with Will Power a further 0.0118 back in third. It is the second pole of Rosenqvist's season after Long Beach, the eighth of his career and his best starting position in seven Portland appearances.

He did not know how close it had been until well after the fact.

"I have to correct myself because in the interview when I looked at the screen, I thought I had 3/10ths to P2," Rosenqvist said. "I thought everyone messed up or something. Yeah, I was shocked when I saw that. Then when I heard it was only 2/100ths, I said that makes more sense."

Rosenqvist swept all three segments, topping Group 2 at 58.4245, Round 2 at 58.6449 and then the Firestone Fast Six. His approach shifted as the afternoon went on.

"It was qualifying by execution, that thin line between risking it and not making mistakes," he said. "I feel like I kind of experimented in Q1, Q2, was able to do safe but quick laps in Q3. That was just enough."

The result caps a substantial recovery for a car that spent Friday in the middle of the order. "Great job by all the Meyer Shank Racing team. We tuned on it all day yesterday and all day today. Got better and better and better," Rosenqvist said. "We weren't really quick yesterday. Great comeback from us coming from practice."

The timing matters to him. Rosenqvist joins Arrow McLaren for 2027, leaving six races to close out his run with Meyer Shank Racing, and he has been direct all weekend about wanting to deliver a win outside the Indianapolis 500 before he goes.

"I feel like we all deserve it, to be honest," he said. "All the boys and girls at Meyer Shank Racing, they're doing a really good job, being really consistent, prepare really good cars. That's my main goal, to give them exactly that."

Palou takes the other front-row spot in the No. 10 DHL Chip Ganassi Racing Honda, his eighth front-row start of 2026 and second at Portland, where he has won twice. He was not entirely satisfied with how his Fast Six lap came together.

"It felt great when I was driving. Man, this could be the one. I did couple mistakes there," Palou said. "So yeah, not super happy that Felix got it, but very happy that we got the front row."

What struck him more was how little separated the field. "It was tight. It was tight, man. We knew. But it's always like that," he said. "Q1, Q2 lap times, Q2 suddenly everybody was two-tenths slower. Suddenly we all picked up those two-tenths. A tenth-and-a-half to two-tenths could have been P12 to P1."

That compression produced the afternoon's most consequential quirk. Group 1 ran significantly quicker than Group 2, and five drivers eliminated from the opening group — Louis Foster, Josef Newgarden, Pato O'Ward, Alexander Rossi and Marcus Armstrong — all recorded times that would have carried them through had they run in the second group. Armstrong, who set the fastest lap of the entire weekend at 58.2981 in Practice 2, was 11th in Group 1 at 58.6089 and will start 21st in the No. 66 OnlyBulls Meyer Shank Racing Honda. Newgarden's session in the No. 2 Astemo Team Penske Chevrolet was further compromised by a drive-through penalty for a pit lane speed violation at 45.905 mph.

Power's 58.3603 atop Group 1 stood as the quickest lap of qualifying, faster than the pole time itself — a reflection of a surface that gave back less as the afternoon progressed. Rosenqvist had planned around exactly that.

"Portland is kind of weird like that. Seems to kind of go slower through the day. I think going earlier could be good," he said. "We just tried to focus on the traffic. People generally go quite slow on out laps. I don't feel that's been good for me in my tire warm-up. I try to have clean out laps. I think that was part of the key."

Christian Lundgaard's afternoon ended before it began. The 2025 Portland pole winner was penalized under Rule 8.3.7.1 for qualifying interference, losing two fast laps and his eligibility to advance, and is classified 25th in the No. 7 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet on a 59.5423.

Marcus Ericsson qualified fourth in the No. 28 Delaware Life Andretti Global Honda, with Rinus VeeKay fifth in the No. 76 Juncos Hollinger Racing Chevrolet and Kyffin Simpson sixth in the No. 8 Sunoco Chip Ganassi Racing Honda. Kyle Kirkwood was seventh and Graham Rahal eighth, both eliminated in Round 2. Dennis Hauger qualified 10th in the No. 19 Ault Block Chain Dale Coyne Racing Honda, a striking result for a rookie making his first Portland start who recorded no laps at all in Practice 1. Scott Dixon was 12th after his Round 2 lap of 59.2023 fell well short of the 58.5065 he managed in Group 2.

Two drivers earned qualifying positions that will not match the grid. David Malukas qualified ninth in the No. 12 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet and Caio Collet 18th in the No. 4 Combitrans Amazonia AJ Foyt Racing Chevrolet, and both must serve six-position starting grid penalties announced Friday for unapproved engine changes. Malukas sits second in the standings, 83 points behind Palou.

Conditions were the most severe of the weekend. The ambient temperature reached 89 degrees under sunny skies with relative humidity at 24 percent, and Firestone engineers measured the track at 131 degrees, rising to 139 degrees at start-finish. Friday's practice produced a reading of 140.2 degrees, the hottest of the 2026 season.

Tire behavior is the open question heading into Sunday. Alternates were markedly quicker in qualifying than they had appeared in opening practice, which leaves both drivers guessing about how the compound holds up over a stint.

"I think a lot of people struggled on reds in practice one. Reds were much faster today in qualifying than the primaries," Palou said. "I don't know if they're going to make it, if they're going to be better than the primaries or not. We're going to see that in warm-up, although the conditions are going to be better than the race. I don't think it's going to be easy to manage those soft tires, but they could be faster."

Asked for his own read, Rosenqvist declined to add anything. "Probably retweet Alex," he said. "No one knows, so we'll see."

Palou expects the closeness of the field to force teams off conventional strategy early. "The race pace is really fast because you cannot really try and save tires or fuel because someone else is at the same pace as you and is going to overtake you," he said. "Then that creates a lot of strategy shake-up, like Lap 20, 30. Everybody just starts going at different paces and it makes for a really entertaining race."

Rosenqvist, meanwhile, is wary of controlling the race from the front the way a Portland pole sitter once could.

"I think now you have to play it a little bit differently, try to cover yourself more. I think luck is more of a factor in general, which I'm not a fan of," he said. "We probably have to cover ourselves more. Hopefully get clean air. That was always a key here in Portland."

Final practice is scheduled for 10:05 a.m. local Sunday on FS1, with the OnlyBulls Grand Prix of Portland going green at 1:27 p.m. local on FOX.

Armstrong Delivers the Weekend's Quickest Lap to Lead Portland Practice 2

Marcus Armstrong put together the fastest lap anyone has managed at Portland International Raceway this weekend on Saturday morning, and he did it in the car that has spent the season looking for a breakthrough on a conventional race weekend.

Armstrong's 58.2981 in the No. 66 OnlyBulls Meyer Shank Racing Honda topped the second NTT IndyCar Series practice for the OnlyBulls Grand Prix of Portland by 0.3125 of a second over Alex Palou, a margin that looked enormous in a session where the next 10 drivers were covered by roughly three tenths. It also moved Armstrong to the top of the combined practice sheet, where his lap is the only one all weekend inside 58.4 seconds.

His teammate gave Meyer Shank Racing a second car in the top four. Felix Rosenqvist was fourth at 58.6692 in the No. 60 SiriusXM Meyer Shank Racing Honda, quickest of anyone in the Group B segment. Speaking Friday, Rosenqvist had framed the closing stretch of the season — his last six races with the team before joining Arrow McLaren for 2027 — as unfinished business for an operation that won the Indianapolis 500 in May but has yet to convert a standard weekend.

"I feel like everyone at the team would be deserving of a victory," Rosenqvist said. "If it's me or Marcus, we've been there sniffing at the top step of the podium a lot this year. That would be really cool for the team with the last six races here for me with Meyer Shank Racing. I think it would be a perfect ending."

Chip Ganassi Racing filled the two positions between them. Palou was second at 58.6106 in the No. 10 DHL Chip Ganassi Racing Honda and Scott Dixon third at 58.6404 in the No. 9 PNC Bank Chip Ganassi Racing Honda, Dixon's best lap of the weekend. Honda power occupied the top four and six of the top eight.

The session again ran in three parts, and again the segments told different stories. The full field had 40 minutes from 10:05 a.m. local, a run Will Power topped at 58.8285 in the No. 26 TWG AI Andretti Global Honda. Group A followed from 10:53, where Armstrong set his benchmark on a four-lap run and Palou, Dixon and David Malukas also recorded their session bests. Group B closed things out from 11:09 with Rosenqvist quickest.

For roughly a third of the field, the opening all-cars run proved to be the best it got. Power, Christian Lundgaard, Louis Foster, Nolan Siegel, Santino Ferrucci, Pato O'Ward and Alexander Rossi all carried times from that segment into the final classification without improving in the group runs. Power, who had spent Friday afternoon puzzling over a track that appeared to slow as the session progressed, finished seventh.

"It was a strange, strange session because it actually got slower on a quicker tire," Power said Friday of Practice 1. "I think what happens is the INDY NXT rubber gets taken off as you go along. The INDY NXT rubber is quite soft and good. So yeah, it's sort of hard to truly know where we stack up."

Scott McLaughlin ended Friday saying he needed to find something overnight, and Saturday suggested he had. The 2022 Portland winner was 23rd in the all-cars segment at 59.4987 before turning a 58.8566 in Group B for 11th overall in the No. 3 Sonsio Vehicle Protection Team Penske Chevrolet.

"I'm not entirely happy with the car right now, but I think we can tune it up and get it better for the rest of the weekend," McLaughlin had said. "Look over data tonight and hopefully we can come back with a strong car tomorrow."

Malukas was fifth at 58.7462 in the No. 12 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet, encouraging pace for a driver who will lose six positions on Sunday's grid. INDYCAR Officiating announced Friday that Malukas and Caio Collet in the No. 4 Combitrans Amazonia AJ Foyt Racing Chevrolet will each serve six-position starting grid penalties for unapproved engine changes. Malukas sits second in the championship, 83 points behind Palou, with six races left across the next five weekends. Collet was 17th in Practice 2 and has run more laps than any driver this weekend with 53.

Marcus Ericsson was sixth at 58.7726 in the No. 28 Delaware Life Andretti Global Honda, with Josef Newgarden eighth, Kyle Kirkwood ninth and Lundgaard 10th. Kirkwood's Friday lap remains his best of the weekend, as do Palou's, Rinus VeeKay's and Kyffin Simpson's — four drivers who ended Saturday morning no quicker than they had been the afternoon before.

Dennis Hauger got a full session in the No. 19 Ault Block Chain Dale Coyne Racing Honda after recording no lap or time in Practice 1, running 30 laps for 23rd at 59.2328. The field completed 580 laps, bringing the weekend's practice total to 1,038.

Conditions were mild, with the ambient temperature at 69 degrees and the track at 93.8 degrees under fair skies at the start of the session, according to Firestone engineers, with relative humidity at 59 percent.

Attention now turns to a track surface nobody can fully predict. An ARCA program runs ahead of NTT P1 Award qualifying at 4:05 p.m. local on FS1, and Power, who expects to be in the opening qualifying group, sees that as a genuine variable.

"Sometimes the rubber can really sway the balance of the car," Power said. "IndyCar rubber doesn't mix. With Firestone, with whatever ARCA is running, that could make things interesting."

Palou Leads Opening Portland Practice, but a Shifting Track Left the Field Guessing

Alex Palou set the fastest lap of the opening NTT IndyCar Series practice for the OnlyBulls Grand Prix of Portland on Friday, though the more useful takeaway from the session may have been how little anyone trusted what the timing screens were telling them.

Palou's 58.5716 in the No. 10 DHL Chip Ganassi Racing Honda came during the opening all-cars run and survived both split-group segments that followed, none of which produced a faster lap from anyone. Kyle Kirkwood wound up second overall, 0.0886 of a second adrift in the No. 27 Sam's Club Andretti Global Honda, on a 58.6602 that topped the Group B segment. Rinus VeeKay was third in the No. 76 Juncos Hollinger Racing Chevrolet at 58.7996, with Will Power fourth in the No. 26 TWG AI Andretti Global Honda at 58.9096 and Louis Foster fifth in the No. 45 Desnuda Organic Tequila Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda at 58.9274. Only those five broke into the 58s.

Practice 1 ran in three parts. Race control pushed the green to 2:40 p.m. local to allow the field to populate pit lane, and the full 80-minute allotment was preserved. A red flag flew at 3:17 p.m. for debris on the backstretch, with the track reopening three minutes later and the checkered flag falling at 3:21. Group B and the rookies then had 12 minutes beginning at 3:28 p.m., followed by Group A and the rookies for 12 minutes from 3:45.

Those split segments are normally where the quick laps come, and they did not. Power, who has won three times at Portland International Raceway including each of the last two years, was blunt about how difficult the session was to read.

"It was a strange, strange session because it actually got slower on a quicker tire," Power said. "I think what happens is the INDY NXT rubber gets taken off as you go along. The INDY NXT rubber is quite soft and good. So yeah, it's sort of hard to truly know where we stack up."

He pointed directly at the session's headline lap as evidence.

"It was a bit unusual this session that Palou did a 8-5 on blacks, then went slow on reds," Power said. "That's to do with INDY NXT rubber going down."

Power expects the compounds to sit close together this weekend — the same tire, he noted, that the series ran at Barber Motorsports Park — but said his own car was nowhere near where it needed to be on the primary. "We certainly were not where we needed to be on the hard compound. We were way off," he said. In a field this tight, he added, that ambiguity is expensive: "Two-tenths can be maybe 10 spots at times. All the details matter."

Saturday introduces another variable. An ARCA Menards Series program shares the weekend, and Power, who expects to run in the opening group of knockout qualifying, sees the track surface as a live question rather than a known quantity. "Sometimes the rubber can really sway the balance of the car," he said. "IndyCar rubber doesn't mix. With Firestone, with whatever ARCA is running, that could make things interesting."

Scott McLaughlin, the 2022 winner here, was seventh at 58.9740 in the No. 3 Sonsio Vehicle Protection Team Penske Chevrolet and came away in a similar frame of mind.

"I'm not entirely happy with the car right now, but I think we can tune it up and get it better for the rest of the weekend," McLaughlin said. "Look over data tonight and hopefully we can come back with a strong car tomorrow."

What draws him to the 12-turn, 1.964-mile road course is the same thing that makes it unforgiving. "Being able to go to a track that requires a little bit of technicality in terms of braking hard, hairpins," McLaughlin said. "Then you have the fast flowing nature of part of the track as well. It's a challenge to set up for, a challenge to drive and get completely right. It's a small lap. Always very tight. It's rewarding when you get it right, but it does punish you when you get it wrong."

Power identified the specific piece of the lap that has been catching drivers out. "It's the combined braking in Turn 1, you have to get through that dip properly," he said. "It's really hard to be accurate 'cause, I mean, seriously that Turn 1 apex wall, you got to get as close as you can, get as close as you can, then you're braking at the same time as you're turning, go into a big dip. It is difficult to get that right."

Kyffin Simpson was sixth for Chip Ganassi Racing at 58.9434 in the No. 8 Sunoco Honda, ahead of McLaughlin, David Malukas at 58.9888 in the No. 12 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet, Josef Newgarden at 59.0349 in the No. 2 Astemo Team Penske Chevrolet and Felix Rosenqvist at 59.0424 in the No. 60 SiriusXM Meyer Shank Racing Honda. Scott Dixon was 11th on the day the six-time series champion prepares to make his 369th consecutive start.

Foster's fifth-place lap came on the fewest circuits of any driver who recorded a time, with 10 laps to his name. Dennis Hauger did not record a lap or a time in the No. 19 Ault Block Chain Dale Coyne Racing Honda and was classified 25th. The field completed 509 laps between them.

The competitive picture had already shifted before the cars ran. INDYCAR Officiating announced Friday that the No. 4 AJ Foyt Racing entry of Caio Collet and the No. 12 Team Penske entry of Malukas will each serve six-position starting grid penalties Sunday for unapproved engine changes. Team Penske made two unapproved changes to the No. 12 at Nashville Superspeedway, triggering the penalty for the second under the series rulebook, while the No. 4 made an unapproved change following the July 20 race. Road and street course events carry a six-position penalty; ovals carry nine.

The timing is unhelpful for Malukas, who sits second in the standings on 374 points, 83 behind Palou, with six races remaining across the next five weekends. McLaughlin, his teammate, was asked what advice he would offer a driver in a title fight for the first time.

"Firstly, one race at a time for everybody. Just take it as it comes, especially in this series these days, how competitive it is," McLaughlin said. "It's about trying not to really focus on the points, just worry about execution, the rest will take care of itself. But it's hard to beat experience in that spot."

McLaughlin said Team Penske will approach the closing stretch as its own contest. "We're sort of looking at from the 3 car side really trying to concentrate on these five weeks as a little mini five-week championship in some ways, and try to do the best we can," he said.

Practice 2 is scheduled for 10:05 a.m. local Saturday on FS1, with NTT P1 Award qualifying — three rounds of knockout format — at 4:05 p.m. on FS1.