Alex Palou put more than half a second on the entire field in qualifying for the Sonsio Grand Prix at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Saturday, a gap so obscene it exceeded the spread between second and fifth place combined. The man chasing a fourth consecutive IndyCar title and fifth in six years isn’t just winning this era. He’s making everyone else look like they’re racing in a different series.
Palou’s pole lap of 1:09.7487 in his No. 10 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda was his second pole of the 2026 season and continues an almost absurd run at this particular track. He’s won the last three Sonsio Grand Prix races and led every round of qualifying on Saturday. When asked about the performance, he kept it simple: “My car was on rails.”
The 18-point championship lead he carried into the weekend now has a very real chance of growing. Kyle Kirkwood, his closest pursuer in the Andretti Global Honda, qualified ninth. That’s a position that makes closing any gap on Palou a steep ask on a road course where track position matters.
Meyer Shank Racing’s Felix Rosenqvist grabbed third on the grid, a quietly impressive result for a driver who became a father four days earlier. His daughter Stella was born Monday. By Saturday, he was threading an IndyCar through the IMS road course on old tires in the Firestone Fast Six and making it look routine.
“I wasn’t really sure what to expect going into quali,” Rosenqvist admitted. The answer turned out to be P3.
Rahal Letterman Lanigan had a more sobering afternoon. Louis Foster made the Fast Six and will start sixth, but he was the team’s only representative in the final round. Last year, RLL put all three cars in the top five at this event.
Foster acknowledged the drop-off — “a bit of a backstep” — while also kicking himself for a mistake on his final lap that he believes cost him a top-four starting spot. Teammate Graham Rahal will line up seventh, just outside the Fast Six cutoff.
Mick Schumacher, RLL’s rookie, qualified 18th. The Schumacher name still draws attention, but the results haven’t followed yet.
Scott Dixon, the ageless wonder at 45, slots into eighth for Ganassi. Romain Grosjean got the Dale Coyne Racing entry into the top 12 at 11th, respectable for that operation. Will Power, now under the Andretti Global banner, could only manage 25th, a reminder that the six-time Indy GP winner’s late-career chapter keeps getting harder to read.
The Honda engine stable showed depth, placing at least one car from each of its five teams into the top-12 round. But this day belonged to one driver and one car. Palou’s dominance at IMS has become the kind of thing that warps a championship.
When you own a track this thoroughly — three straight wins, pole again, gaps that defy logic — you don’t just collect points. You collect the psychological rent from every driver behind you who knows they’re fighting for second.
The green flag drops Saturday afternoon at 4:30 PM ET on Fox, and the field will watch the back of Palou’s car roll away from them yet again. The only real question at this point isn’t whether he can win a fourth straight title. It’s whether anyone can make him work for it.
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