Pato O’Ward continues different IndyCar pole winner streak at Mid-Ohio

The last time an NTT IndyCar Series began with nine different drivers winning pole across the first nine races, Bobby Lewis was the the top-charting Billboard single artist and West Side Story was on its way to winning Best Picture.

Pato O’Ward was pole winner #9 on Saturday at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, setting a time of 1:06.70 that beat Scott McLaughlin by .13 of a second. In helping IndyCar set the different pole-sitters milestone last achieved in 1961, O’Ward notched his fifth career pole and third on a road course after Road America in 2020 and Barber last year. He also scored his best qualifying spot at Mid-Ohio by a wide margin as his previous best was fifteenth in his track début in 2020.

Despite the pole, O’Ward described it as “really messy” as “I kept leaving three, four, even half a second on the table just because I couldn’t get it right. If it wasn’t turn blah-blah, it was another. It was really tough to get it right, so I’m super happy to get it together for the team in Q3.”

“I’ve had very successful weekends here in junior formulas but haven’t really capitalised a weekend here in IndyCar, so I think this is the first step. I’m excited for tomorrow. I think we will have a strong race car as we’ve had in the past; the problem is we just haven’t really had that chance to make our life a little bit easier during the race. I’ve had to pass so many cars.”

The session was not without incident for O’Ward, who blocked rookie David Malukas during the second round and prevented him from setting a strong time to make the Firestone Fast Six. IndyCar elected not to penalise O’Ward for the hindrance and Malukas placed eighth, still good enough to be the highest qualifying rookie.

“I am very angry,” said Malukas. “We were being impeded, [O’Ward] didn’t even get an impedement (penalty) for it and we left a little bit on the box there, we missed the Fast Six. It’s really unfortunate I couldn’t show everything that the Dale Coyne car had today. It was spectacular. We tried to put things for the first practice, made it into the top six for the first group, and switched it all together to go for the second qualifying and it was right where we needed it to be.

“It was unfortunate we ended up getting blocked there and couldn’t make it in. But overall, the fact that we’re unhappy for P8, I think it shows that we’re going in the right direction.”

O’Ward simply described the matter as “not my problem. I think he’s got to learn how to distance himself and learn that. He put himself in that position. The red tyres were coming in on lap three and he was on my gearbox in lap one. It’s like, ‘You think I’m going to let you by or something?’ I’m in my programme too.

“I don’t think I was doing anything wrong there. I was gapping to Simon and he decided not to do so, and he had a pretty big gap. Usually, people respect when someone gaps in front of you, they keep gapping so you’re not really under threat. I saw that, I was also surprised. I was like, ‘Why was he backing away?’ But yeah, he did that to himself.”

Although he fell short of the pole, McLaughlin’s qualifying effort is his best at a road course, trumping his fourth at Barber in May. The rest of the Fast Six consisted of Colton Herta, Felix Rosenqvist, Scott Dixon, and Simon Pagenaud. All but Pagenaud have won a pole in 2022, though Pagenaud enjoys his third Fast Six qualification of the year.

Will Power received a qualifying interference penalty when he impeded Hélio Castroneves‘ flying lap while warming his tyres, forcing Castroneves to swerve before going through the grass. As a result, Power’s time—which would have topped his group’s—was void and he was relegated to a starting position of twenty-first.

While the penalty leaves Power in a difficult spot for Sunday, it did little to help championship leader Marcus Ericsson and 2021 Mid-Ohio winner Josef Newgarden‘s qualifying runs as they fell short of making the second round. They will respectively start thirteenth and fourteenth, just ahead of Castroneves.

Despite so many contenders at the back, O’Ward knows not to underestimate the race.

“If you look at it, it’s a great opportunity to capitalise, but there are certain rules that can really throw your race upside-down if something happens that you really can’t control,” he continued. “Sometimes, it is a lot better to be starting at the back, as we saw at Portland last year, than being in the front. I think we’ve definitely executed when qualifying came, and I think tomorrow, we just need to take the race as it comes and just be sure that we can react to certain things to keep our position.”

Qualifying results

Position	Number	Driver	Team	Best Time	Best Speed (mph)
1	5	Pato O’Ward	Arrow McLaren SP	01:06.7054	121.861
2	3	Scott McLaughlin	Team Penske	01:06.8382	121.619
3	26	Colton Herta	Andretti Autosport	01:07.0262	121.278
4	7	Felix Rosenqvist	Arrow McLaren SP	01:07.2163	120.935
5	9	Scott Dixon	Chip Ganassi Racing	01:07.4047	120.597
6	60	Simon Pagenaud	Meyer Shank Racing	01:07.4199	120.570
7	10	Álex Palou	Chip Ganassi Racing	01:06.7965	121.695
8	18	David Malukas	Dale Coyne Racing with HMD Motorsports	01:06.8201	121.652
9	14	Kyle Kirkwood	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	01:06.9506	121.415
10	77	Callum Ilott	Juncos Hollinger Racing	01:06.9534	121.410
11	21	Rinus VeeKay	Ed Carpenter Racing	01:06.9843	121.354
12	27	Alexander Rossi	Andretti Autosport	01:07.0155	121.297
13	8	Marcus Ericsson	Chip Ganassi Racing	01:07.1475	121.059
14	2	Josef Newgarden	Team Penske	01:07.3338	120.724
15	06	Hélio Castroneves	Meyer Shank Racing	01:07.1798	121.001
16	30	Christian Lundgaard	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	01:07.4207	120.568
17	28	Romain Grosjean	Andretti Autosport	01:07.2573	120.861
18	15	Graham Rahal	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	01:07.5909	120.265
19	51	Takuma Sato	Dale Coyne Racing with Rick Ware Racing	01:07.4645	120.490
20	29	Devlin DeFrancesco	Andretti Autosport	01:07.6475	120.164
21	12	Will Power	Team Penske	01:07.5559	120.327
22	20	Conor Daly	Ed Carpenter Racing	01:07.6745	120.116
23	4	Dalton Kellett	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	01:08.2444	119.113
24	45	Jack Harvey	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	01:07.9362	119.653
25	16	Simona De Silvestro	Paretta Autosport	01:08.4995	118.669
26	11	Tatiana Calderón	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	01:08.4370	118.778
27	48	Jimmie Johnson	Chip Ganassi Racing	01:08.5318	118.614

Italics – Rookie