Herta breaks Long Beach track record on his way to pole position

Colton Herta, who won last year’s IndyCar Grand Prix of Long Beach from 14th on the grid, will start this year’s race from pole position after setting a new course record during qualifying on Saturday.

Herta had the dominant car throughout all three stages of qualifying, leading his group in the first round, then leading the second round. He took pole with a time of 1’05.310, which eclipsed Hélio Castroneves’ previous course record set in 2017, by nearly a full second.

What could have been an all-Andretti Autosport front row was thrown out with just two seconds left in the Fast Six session, when Romain Grosjean, the fastest driver in the morning’s practice session, crashed into the barrier at turn five. He was able to drive his wounded car back to the pits, but had his fastest lap time deleted for causing a red flag, moving him down to sixth on the grid.

That moved Josef Newgarden, the winner of the previous race at Texas Motor Speedway, to the outside of the front row alongside Herta.

Reigning IndyCar champion Álex Palou starts third, at the venue where he clinched the 2021 title. He’ll be followed by McLaren SP driver Felix Rosenqvist, who had another great qualifying effort in fourth, and two-time Long Beach winner Alexander Rossi in fifth, still looking for his first victory since 2019. Herta will look to replicate Rossi’s feat of winning back-to-back Long Beach Grands Prix in 2018-19.

Will Power, who Grosjean beat to the last Fast Six berth by a one ten-thousandth of a second, qualified in seventh place. Marcus Ericsson was eighth, championship leader Scott McLaughlin ninth, and Friday practice pace setter Simon Pagenaud was tenth.

Pato O’Ward and top rookie Kyle Kirkwood will share the sixth row, qualifying 11th and 12th respectively.

Graham Rahal missed out on advancing to second round qualifying after being impeded by Jimmie Johnson. Johnson finished last in Group One and will start 25th, driving with a broken bone in his right hand that he sustained after crashing into the turn five wall during Friday practice.

Scott Dixon and Rinus VeeKay were also eliminated during the first round of qualifying – Dixon will start 14th, ahead of VeeKay in 15th.

Rookie Devlin DeFrancesco will start tomorrow’s race from 23rd after a six-place grid penalty handed down before the weekend, for avoidable contact in the previous race at Texas – specifically, for his role in a multi-car accident that took himself, Rahal, and Castroneves out of the 375 mile race.

Tomorrow’s 38th running of the Long Beach Grand Prix begins at 8:45 PM BST.

Position	Car	Driver	Team	Engine
1	26	Colton Herta	Andretti	Honda
2	2	Josef Newgarden	Penske	Chevrolet
3	10	Alex Palou	Ganassi	Honda
4	7	Felix Rosenqvist	McLaren SP	Chevrolet
5	27	Alexander Rossi	Andretti	Honda
6	28	Romain Grosjean	Andretti	Honda
7	12	Will Power	Penske	Chevrolet
8	8	Marcus Ericsson	Ganassi	Honda
9	3	Scott McLaughlin	Penske	Chevrolet
10	60	Simon Pagenaud	Meyer Shank	Honda
11	5	Pato O’Ward	McLaren SP	Chevrolet
12	14	Kyle Kirkwood	Foyt	Chevrolet
13	15	Graham Rahal	RLL	Honda
14	6	Helio Castroneves	Meyer Shank	Honda
15	21	Rinus VeeKay	Carpenter	Chevrolet
16	9	Scott Dixon	Ganassi	Honda
17	20	Conor Daly	Carpenter	Chevrolet
18	18	David Malukas	Coyne/HMD	Honda
19	30	Christian Lundgaard	RLL	Honda
20	45	Jack Harvey	RLL	Honda
21	77	Callum Ilott	Juncos Hollinger	Chevrolet
22	51	Takuma Sato	Coyne/RWR	Honda
23	29	Devlin DeFrancesco	Andretti Steinbrenner	Honda
24	4	Dalton Kellett	Foyt	Chevrolet
25	48	Jimmie Johnson	Ganassi	Honda
26	11	Tatiana Calderon	Foyt	Chevrolet