Marcus Ericsson waited 117 races for this. The 2022 Indianapolis 500 winner finally nailed his first NTT INDYCAR SERIES pole position Saturday on the streets of Arlington, Texas, beating four-time champion Alex Palou by nearly half a second in a new qualifying format nobody had ever tried before.
The margin — 0.4618 seconds — wasn’t close. It was a demolition.
Ericsson’s 1:34.3562 lap around the 14-turn, 2.73-mile temporary circuit winding between AT&T Stadium and Globe Life Field stood up against five subsequent challengers in IndyCar’s debut of single-car, single-lap shootout qualifying for the Firestone Fast Six. He went out first, set the time, and watched everyone else fall short.
“I’ve waited long enough; I can tell you that,” Ericsson said. “I think 2013 was the last pole I had.”
Three previous times in IndyCar he’d qualified second. At St. Petersburg three weeks ago, two hundredths of a second separated him from the top spot. Saturday, there was no ambiguity.
Honda’s engine program turned the Arlington qualifying session into a showcase. Five of six Firestone Fast Six entries ran Honda power. Palou slotted second at 1:34.8180 in his Chip Ganassi Racing entry. Pato O’Ward’s Arrow McLaren Chevrolet was the lone interloper in third at 1:34.8453.
Will Power, in his first season with Andretti Global after leaving Team Penske, grabbed fourth. Meyer Shank Racing teammates Felix Rosenqvist and Marcus Armstrong locked out Row 3. That’s six of the top seven spots for Honda. Chevrolet had one car in the Fast Six. One.
The new qualifying format inverted the order from the second round, sending the slowest of the six out first and the quickest last. Ericsson, who barely scraped into the Fast Six as the last qualifier from his group, laid down his lap and never looked back. Palou, who went last with the theoretical advantage of knowing the target, couldn’t touch it.
“Going last didn’t help us in terms of tire temp,” Palou said, finding diplomacy where frustration might have been more honest.
Andretti Global had a quietly massive day. Three cars in the top seven — Ericsson on pole, Power fourth, Kyle Kirkwood seventh. That’s the kind of qualifying depth that wins constructors’ arguments in the paddock. Team principal Ron Ruzewski called it “monumental” without a trace of understatement for a squad still proving itself in 2026.
Kirkwood’s seventh was the story that could have been. Fastest in morning practice and second in points coming into Arlington, he made what he called “a massive mental error” — losing track of his fuel window and lap timing in the Fast 12 round, then brushing the wall for good measure. The pace was there. The execution wasn’t.
Meanwhile, the series’ biggest names stumbled badly. Points leader Josef Newgarden crashed in practice, forcing a chassis swap, and qualified only 11th. Scott McLaughlin fared worse, slamming the Turn 8 wall in an incident eerily similar to Newgarden’s, and will start dead last in the 25-car field.
Two Penske Chevrolets wrecked on the same street circuit in the same day. That’s not bad luck. That’s a problem.
Sunday’s 70-lap race has been pushed up to a noon ET green flag due to forecasted high winds in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Live coverage starts at 11:30 a.m. on FOX.
Ericsson goes into that race with the cleanest air and the fastest car. He’s won the biggest race in the world. A pole position shouldn’t feel like a breakthrough, but 117 starts is a long time to wait for anything.
The grin on his face said he knew it. Now he has to convert. Arlington’s tight walls don’t care about your qualifying time.
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