LEXINGTON, Ohio — While experience ruled in Saturday’s (July 5) qualifying, as Alex Palou and Christian Lundgaard will start on the front row for Sunday’s (July 6) Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, their youthful teammates will start just behind them in their best NTT IndyCar Series qualifying efforts to date.
Kyffin Simpson‘s No. 8 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda will start third ahead of Nolan Siegel‘s No. 6 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet, as both drivers advanced together through three rounds of knockout qualifying around the 13-turn, 2.258-mile road course.
Simpson was sixth fastest in the first group of round one and was sixth fastest again in the second round. That enabled the Cayman Islands native to make his Firestone Fast Six debut, where he posted a best lap of 1 minute, 5.7555 seconds to average 123.622 mph.
“It was incredible — all the glory goes to God,” Simpson told FOX’s Jack Harvey. “That was a tough qualifying, and it was very close, especially in those first couple segments. Just barely slipping through in sixth place in both of them was a little nerve-wracking, and being P3 in that session, I was very surprised about, but very happily surprised.”
Before Mid-Ohio, Simpson’s best qualifying result was 10th, coming at both Barber Motorsports Park and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course. Palou was highly complimentary of his teammate in the post-qualifying press conference.
“We need to remember that [Simpson]’s very, very young,” Palou said. “I think he’s 20. He’s 20. He’s very, very young. He’s been picking up a ton of speed, especially this year, as I said. I think he’s in front of one [Team] Penske car in the championship standings now with a couple of incidents and mechanical issues that he had.
“If you look at the performance he’s had, he’s been really, really fast, and it’s not been just by luck. I think he just finished in Road America sixth or fifth, so that was pretty good. It’s amazing. Honestly, I don’t think he cares or I care or anybody cares about what they think about him, but yeah, he’s good. I’m very happy for him.”
As for Siegel, he also was in the first group in round one, setting the fourth fastest time in that 10-minute session. In the second round of qualifying, Siegel was fifth fastest to advance to his second Fast Six appearance.
The Palo Alto, Calif., native was just 0.1707 seconds slower than Simpson to round out the second row of the grid.
“I feel like our race pace this year has been solid, and it makes it a lot easier starting up front,” Siegel said. “So compared to Road America, where we felt like we were fast and we’re starting in the back and have to go be aggressive and pass people, now I think it makes our day a lot more simple, and I’m really excited to get going.”
Siegel said that there were some issues with the car setup on Friday (July 4) and the team had to overhaul the setup ahead of the morning practice session.
“We thought there was a direction that might have something that we were looking for from last year, and it just didn’t end up working,” Siegel said. “So it was kind of a totally different philosophy in the setup. Just didn’t find what we thought we were going to find and kind of really went back to to what we were running last year, and we’re good again.”
Sunday’s on-track activity will begin with the morning warmup airing on FOX Sports 1 that will start shortly after 9:30 a.m. ET. The 90-lap race will air live on FOX, with the broadcast starting at 1 p.m. ET and the green flag at 1:22 p.m. ET.
Christopher DeHarde has covered IndyCar racing and the Road to Indy for various outlets since 2014. In addition to open wheel racing, DeHarde has also covered IMSA and various short track racing events around Indiana. Originally from New Orleans, DeHarde moved to the Indianapolis area in 2017 to further pursue a career as a motorsports writer.