IndyCar rookie Felix Rosenqvist says his third-place on the St Petersburg grid felt like “a gift” not a result on merit.
Rosenqvist has looked close to his reigning champion Chip Ganassi Racing team-mate Scott Dixon’s pace throughout pre-season testing and practice at the season-opener.
He went on to beat Dixon to third on the grid by 0.166 seconds as he was only outqualified by Penske duo Will Power and Josef Newgarden.
But Rosenqvist only made it to the ‘Fast Six’ pole shootout as a result of fellow star rookie Colton Herta losing his two fastest laps for holding up Charlie Kimball.
As a result, Rosenqvist was far from ebullient about his performance.
Asked if he was close enough to pole to feel he could contend for poles and wins this year, Rosenqvist said: “That’s definitely the target. I expect myself to be there at some point.
“But it felt more like a gift to be up here, than my actual performance.
“I would say we belong a bit further down the list – there and thereabouts but with stuff definitely to work on.
“It seems to be the thing in this series that you need to go fast and hang on and if you’re lucky you’re going to have a good result. It’s a [case of] ‘never give up,’ I guess.”
Dixon also benefited from a penalty in order to progress through qualifying during a difficult session.
He spun on a flying lap in his Q1 group and then his second lap was not fast enough to advance into round two.
But Takuma Sato had his fastest time deleted for delaying another competitor by causing a yellow flag when he went up an escape road, allowing Dixon to advance instead.
Having reached the pole session, Dixon was still not happy with the handling despite the large number of changes Ganassi made during qualifying.
“It’s still far from OK,” he said. “We kept going in a circle, just really struggling to piece the corner together.
“Loads of understeer at apexes, just really chasing it, so we’ll have to think about a lot of stuff.
“The car’s OK, it’s in the window, but it’s just not fun to drive.”
In contrast to Dixon, Rosenqvist said he felt his car was good and that the improvements needed to come from himself.
“I wasn’t that unhappy,” he said. “I felt I had a lot in the driving to go through first before I wanted to make changes.
“It was my first quali session as well, so I didn’t really have the confidence to change a bunch of stuff.”