2025 IndyCar Grand Prix of Monterey at Laguna Seca - qualifying results

Alex Palou took pole in the dry lake bed of Laguna Seca after he set a lap time of 1:08.341 which was three-tenths faster than his championship competitor, Pato O’Ward.

Setting the scene for a showdown in the race tomorrow, O’Ward did his best to continue his hot streak and to find his second pole of the year but will now look to tomorrow to continue to bring the fight to the Spaniard who he sits under 100 points to in the championship.

After his pole, Palou said: “The car has been amazing. Yesterday, practice one, I felt like we had a ton of pace. All year honestly, everybody at Chip Ganassi Racing has been doing a tremendous job making me look good on track.

“It feels great to be on pole here and cannot wait for tomorrow. I will do my best. It's tough, I mean to be able to put everything together in a race in IndyCar, you guys have seen, it's pretty tough, but we'll do everything that we can to try and be up top tomorrow.

Although O’Ward would have inevitably liked pole, he recognised that this is his best-ever qualifying position at Laguna Seca and gave credit to Palou who set a “monster lap”.

“My best starting position here, we'll take that. Alex threw down a monster lap there and, yeah, just happy that we had a smooth qualifying.” O’ward digressed, “It's been a bit of a stranger to be in the Fast Six this year so it's good to be back in here.

“He's the guy we have to beat and he's starting in front of us so we'll see what tomorrow has in store.”

Colton Herta will start third while Josef Newgarden showed that when everything goes right, he can still fight with the best. The multiple word champion will start fourth which is his best qualifying position this year outside of an oval.

Newgarden was joined by his teammate, Will Power, in the Fast Six who will start fifth while David Malukas finished at the bottom of the final qualifying session.

A cancelled Practice Two due to early morning fog meant that drivers entered qualifying blind after only one hour to work out set up on Friday in Practice One.

Unsure of what tyre to use in qualifying, Group One saw an array of cars using different compounds. Penske drivers Josef Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin used the softer red tyre in Group One and were joined by Marcus Ericsson on the decision.

However, others on the hard tyre proved that the compound’s longer life meant it could survive the lap better with Ericsson and McLaughlin eliminated while Newgarden survived by the skin of his teeth and only 0.020s faster than his teammate.

McLaughlin said: “It's the same for everyone but the Xfinity Chevy yesterday, we rolled off a little bit out of the window.

“[We] threw a lot of changes at it this morning but a genius decided to say 8:30 for practice so no one's gonna run unfortunately but it's the same for everyone.

“We just missed out, It's frustrating, but I'm glad that we made some improvements there and we'll all be better here tomorrow.”

Mclaughlin will start 13th while Ericsson will start 15th.

Despite two out of the three soft tyre runners eliminated in Group One, this didn’t seem to scare teams in Group Two with seven of the drivers using the red tyres.

However, by the time the final runs came everyone made the switch to the softer compound. Pato O’Ward found himself in danger in the final minute in the drop zone, however, he put himself to the top of the timesheet with his final lap.

Kyle Kirkwood was also at threat sat in 13th as the clock hit zero but couldn’t set a time fast enough to escape being eliminated and finished ninth overall.

“The last lap, it wasn't great”, Kirkwood explained, “We were aiming for lap two and I was just stuck in traffic there.

“Everybody's kind of backing up, [I’m] not sure what everybody else was doing. I'm sure that they're probably just going to lap three but, for us, we needed to do a lap two and never really got a feel for the car and then came to the last corner and had a pretty substantial snap and then fought in the car to keep it on track.

[The] car's fast, we definitely should transfer there. Just a few unfortunate circumstances kind of held us out from there but we'll have more tires than everybody else now.

“I guess that's the positive we can take from it and go from there. The strategy begins for tomorrow.”

Kirkwood was joined by Santino Ferrucci in the elimination zone and Nolan Siegel while Graham Rahal managed to sneak his way into the Fast 12.

The Andretti driver will start 18th while Ferrucci will start 20th.

The Fast 12 saw a similar story to Group Two with a mixture of drivers on the two different tyre compounds. It was Colton Herta who changed the narrative of the session by setting the fastest lap on used red tyres.

This made other drivers make the change to the softer compound no matter if it was used which made an incredibly close session for all the drivers.

Pato O’Ward was nearly eliminated and sat in 11th with 30 seconds to go. Starting his final lap with moments to go, Felix Rosenqvist and Alex Palou almost denied him a chance to do his final lap with both having moments off track in the closing stages.

Rosenqvist spun his Grateful Dead livery car and managed to keep it going through the gravel while Palou drifted his car into the dust but kept his foot in to bring it back onto track.

With neither incident bringing out anything more than a local yellow, O’Ward put his time in and managed to get himself into the Fast Six.

Rosenqvist was eliminated however and blamed the spin on the reason he didn’t quite make it into the final group. He will start 12th.

He said: “I just spun at Turn Five, [I] went in a little hard and I couldn't save it.

“It is what it is, my pace is there, though. We're fast, P2 in the first group, and we were sitting P2 there so it's annoying when you have the lap time and then it goes away.

‘[It] seems like whenever there's penalties to be handed out, we're there to take them. You can run someone off the track and that's fine. It was my bad so I'll have to go forward tomorrow.”

In the Fast Six, drivers seemed to not want to reveal their cards early in the session with no competitive lap times set until the final minutes.

Both Newgarden and Palou first appeared on the hard tyre before switching after a couple of laps onto the softer compound.

Meanwhile Herta waited for most of the session in the pits feeling no need to set a banker lap.

However, it was O’Ward who pulled the trigger first in the Mexican standoff and initially went first before Palou hit bullseye and set a lap time three tenths faster than the Mexican driver