Lundgaard lapped the 11-turn, 1.786-mile Exhibition Place street course with a best lap of 1m04.1567s, and will start ahead of Scott McLaughlin (Team Penske) and Pato O’Ward (Arrow McLaren) after a thrilling Fast Six session that was only decided on the final laps.
Palou confessed he didn’t get a good enough lap in on the softer alternate tyres in the opening group session and will start mired in the middle of the pack on a track that’s renowned to be difficult to overtake around.
Fast Six qualifying
With the track drying fast, the Firestone Fast Six field began mostly on wets but O’Ward started on alternate slicks, a route that was followed by the Penske entries of Will Power and McLaughlin straight away, and the others soon switched.
O’Ward set the pace with 1m07.9483s, a second faster than Power, before McLaughlin spun at Turn 8. O’Ward kept pounding in the laps, over a second per lap faster with each tour, working down to 1m05.7235s.
McLaughlin rebounded from his spin to set 1m05.6532s to snatch P1, before Power produced 1m05.0703s and Felix Rosenqvist managed 1m04.9423s. Ericsson and McLaughlin took turns at the top before Lundgaard unleashed his 1m04.1567s.
McLaughlin was second, and kept the position due to the timing of his spin, ahead of O’Ward, Ericsson, Rosenqvist – remarkable given he’d holed the tub with his crash in practice in the morning and was forced to drive the back-up car – and Power.
Fast 12 qualifying
After a long hold while the action-packed Group 2 qualifying results were reviewed, the track dried out a little but the 12 runners all ran on wet tyres throughout.
In the second round of qualifying, O’Ward – who pitted for new wets – set the fastest time at 1m11.3448s on his final lap, ahead of Lundgaard, Rosenqvist, McLaughlin, Ericsson and Power – the latter duo both clipping the wall.
Failing to make it through were Scott Dixon (Ganassi), Andretti Autosport duo Kyle Kirkwood and Romain Grosjean, Marcus Armstrong (Ganassi), Josef Newgarden (Penske) and Rinus VeeKay (Ed Carpenter Racing).
Group stage qualifying
In Group 1, Kirkwood was fastest on a dry track with a time of 1m00.6453s, before rain began to fall with a minute left on the clock.
Missing out were Helio Castroneves (Meyer Shank Racing), who will start 13th on the odd-side of the grid, but most shockingly failing to progress was championship leader Palou (15th), who didn’t get a good enough first lap on alternate tyres before the rain fell.
Another quick driver from practice who fell at the first hurdle was David Malukas (Dale Coyne Racing), along with Jack Harvey (Rahal), Ryan Hunter-Reay (ECR), Sting Ray Robb (Coyne) and Benjamin Pedersen (AJ Foyt Racing).
In Group 2, the track was completely soaked with all 14 cars on wet-weather rubber. Grosjean set the quickest time at 1m14.0454s.
The session was incident-packed: Herta overshot Turn 8, costing him his fastest lap as he caused a local yellow flag, with Grosjean doing likewise at Turn 3. Grosjean had earlier set the fastest time with four minutes to go and spun as he crossed the timing line, but rejoined and went even faster.
Making no further progress were (again shockingly) practice pacesetter Herta (Andretti), who will start 14th, ahead of Callum Ilott (Juncos Hollinger Racing), Agustin Canapino (Juncos Hollinger Racing), debutant Tom Blomqvist (MSR), who smacked the tyres as he crossed the line for the final time, Devlin DeFrancesco (Andretti) and Santino Ferrucci (Foyt).
Neither Alexander Rossi (McLaren) and Graham Rahal (Rahal) were running as the track conditions were best; Rahal spun exiting Turn 6, damaging his nose against the wall, while Rossi got stranded in the Turn 1 runoff route.
“The car just died, electrically,” rued Rossi. Rahal added: “We stiffened the car up quite a bit for qualifying and there was no time to go back, but I certainly spun in the wrong spot.”