It’s been a roller coaster-type season for Andretti Autosport, but Colton Herta might just be turning his season around just at the right time.
Colton Herta laid down a quick lap of 1:06.3096 seconds during the Fast 6 to capture his second straight pole positon for tomorrow’s Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio This is Herta’s 11th career pole win as he seeks his first win of 2023.
Herta edged out Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Graham Rahal (1:06.3528 seconds) by a mere .04 seconds, making this the second-closest battle for the pole on a road course or street circuit this season.
“Really happy to get two in a row,” Herta said, smiling.
When Herta was asked if he was aware of the .0432 difference during the final round of qualifying, he responded, “Usually I don’t know. I don’t like to know, but I went off before — I think on my third lap before my last lap, so I asked them because I wasn’t pushing at that point, and they told me I think it was like a low 3 or something that I needed.”
“So I did that time, but I wasn’t sure if it was good enough still. It took them like 30 seconds to tell me. Everybody went around again, so it could have gotten better. No, it ended up being good enough, and it was a good lap. I think I did pretty good with it.”
Back-to-back NTT P1 Awards for @ColtonHerta.
Follow along as Colton and @TonyKanaan break down the lap that brought home pole in @Mid_Ohio qualifying. pic.twitter.com/8mHJgixgCc— NTT INDYCAR SERIES (@IndyCar) July 1, 2023
Rahal wasn’t the only RLL driver to have success during today’s qualifying, as teammates Christian Lundgaard (1:06.6277 seconds) made the Fast 6 and will roll off P5.
“I’m not going to lie — it was a good lap, and I knew it was solid,” Rahal said. “I was bummed to not get a pole.”
When asked about today’s success during qualifying for RLL, Rahal responded, “Yeah, really nice for the team. It’s been a long time coming. We’ve been beat up. We’ve been bruised. We’ve been knocked down. For us as a team to rebound this way, I could have told you last night after the practice, yeah, I was P20, but I told everybody I don’t think that’s real at all.”
“…and I told the guys in the engineering room I said, actually I think I’ve got P2, P3 pace and I don’t normally say that unless I’m fairly confident that we do. This morning we went out, ran only one set of blacks, we’re right there.”
“So, yeah, I felt good. To be honest with you, this is the first weekend I felt like I’ve had the car to where I can drive it the way I want to drive it, and it’s rewarded me because finally — like this isn’t a long year, and it’s finally to the place I can charge the entries, I can do the things that I like to do with my style, and it’s just nice to finally see the result come.”
“It almost feels in a weird way like today you don’t have to drive nearly as hard as you were the last two years combined. You knew the speed was there. You weren’t over by pressuring yourself. You just simply needed to work through it and get there.”
The rest of the grid looks like this: Herta’s Andretti teammate Kyle Kirkwood (1:06.3693 seconds) will roll off P3, followed by 2021 series champion and current points leader Alex Palou in his No. 10 Honda (1:06.4166 seconds) in fourth.
“I think it was the right call to split the strategy a little bit,” Kirkwood said. “But honestly, I don’t think that (Herta) made the right call. He still put it on pole and drove super well.”
Meyer Shank Racing’s Simon Pagenaud did not qualify as a precaution following his Turn 4 incident early in Saturday morning’s practice when his No. 60 Honda violently flipped through the gravel trap. Pagenaud was evaluated and released by the IndyCar Medical team, although per protocol he was not cleared to return to action Saturday. He will be evaluated Sunday morning. The team has asked series veteran Conor Daly to be on standby in the event that Pagenaud can’t drive in the race. Daly has been without a seat since Road America after parting ways with Ed Carpenter Racing after Detroit.
Notes – Qualifying went so well for Honda that today was the first time one manufacturer has swept the final qualifying group since 2016 when Chevrolet swept at Watkins Glen.
Up Next: Warmup – Tomorrow, 10:30 a.m. EST on Peacock
