{"id":275000,"date":"2026-04-19T02:21:25","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T02:21:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/275000\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T02:21:25","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T02:21:25","slug":"felix-rosenqvist-beats-pato-oward-to-pole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/275000\/","title":{"rendered":"Felix Rosenqvist beats Pato O\u2019Ward to pole"},"content":{"rendered":"

Felix Rosenqvist<\/a> will lead the field to the green flag after winning pole for Sunday\u2019s Acura Grand Prix of Long beach.<\/p>\n

The Swede, driving the #60 Meyer Shank Racing Honda, put together a strong flying lap of 1m07.4635s around the 1.968-mile, 11-turn temporary street circuit to claim the top spot. It\u2019s the seventh pole of his IndyCar Series career.<\/p>\n

Pato O’Ward<\/a>\u2019s #5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet the last to go out on the adjusted single-car, single-lap qualifying for street circuits, nearly pulled off a dramatic run to take the spot, but was left settling for second by 0.0441s.<\/p>\n

Chip Ganassi Racing\u2019s Alex Palou<\/a> ended up third, ahead of Andretti Global\u2019s Kyle Kirkwood<\/a> and Team Penske\u2019s David Malukas<\/a>. Scott Dixon<\/a>, in the #9 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda, will line up sixth.<\/p>\n

Fast Six
\n \"Felix <\/p>\n

Felix Rosenqvist, Meyer Shank w\/ Curb-Agajanian<\/p>\n

Photo by: Penske Entertainment<\/p>\n

With the adjusted single-car, single-lap qualifying format for street events allowing for those involved to choose when they want to go out based on how they ended up in Segment 2, the order ended up being\u00a0Malukas, Palou, Felix, Kirkwood, Dixon, and O’Ward. The only key adjustment was O\u2019Ward, who opted to go out last despite being fifth in the second round.<\/p>\n

Malukas had several sideways moments during his run, with the rear sliding and kicking out as he delivered a 1m07.6508s lap to set the baseline time.<\/p>\n

Reigning and four-time IndyCar champion Palou was the next out, and smoothly hustled around until having a massive lockup into the final hairpin corner, but the error wasn\u2019t enough to deter setting the quick lap of 1m07.5289s to dethrone Malukas.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The third driver to go out was Rosenqvist, who managed to vault to the top with an inch-perfect flyer and used up every part of the track to nail a 1m07.4635s lap.<\/p>\n

Defending race winner\u00a0Kirkwood went out fourth and was tracking for the front row but a brief slide in Turn 4 and another in Turn 10 resulted in a lap of 1m07.6199s to slot third and push Malukas down to fourth.<\/p>\n

Six-time series champion Dixon, who has never sat on pole at Long Beach, went out fifth and was unable to vault any of his rivals after a lap of 1m07.8566s.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Ward went out last among the group, but tracked even with Rosenqvist throughout the lap but narrowly missed out on bumping him for pole, with a lap of 1m07.5076s to slot second.<\/p>\n

Round of 12
\n \"Will <\/p>\n

Will Power, Andretti Global<\/p>\n

Photo by: Penske Entertainment<\/p>\n

Malukas delivered a 1m07.244s quick lap to pace the second round, ahead of\u00a0Palou by 0.0117s. Rosenqvist ended up third, with Kirkwood and O\u2019Ward behind. The last driver to transfer into the Firestone Fast Six was Dixon, who surged to the spot in the final moment by making up a tenth of second in the final hairpin corner.<\/p>\n

Andretti\u00a0Global\u2019s Will Power<\/a>was bumped by Dixon, missing the transfer spot by 0.0272s. Team Penske\u2019s Scott McLaughlin<\/a> was eighth, with Chip Ganassi Racing\u2019s Kyffin Simpson in ninth and Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing\u2019s Graham Rahal in 10th. Arrow McLaren\u2019s Christian Lundgaard was 11th, followed by Juncos Hollinger Racing\u2019s Rinus VeeKay.<\/p>\n

Groups
\n \"Josef <\/p>\n

Josef Newgarden, Team Penske<\/p>\n

Photo by: Penske Entertainment<\/p>\n

In Group 1, Rosenqvist dished out a 1m07.4691s flying lap to go to the top of the time sheets. O\u2019Ward ended up second at 0.1674s behind. Malukas was third, ahead of Lundgaard, McLaughlin and VeeKay.<\/p>\n

Meyer Shank Racing\u2019s Marcus Armstrong was the first to miss the transfer spot. Others to miss out included Andretti Global\u2019s Marcus Ericsson, Dale Coyne Racing\u2019s duo of Romain Grosjean and rookie Dennis Hauger, along with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing\u2019s duo Louis Foster<\/a> and rookie Mick Schumacher<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Group 2 was led by Dixon, followed by Palou, Power, Kirkwood, Simpson and Rahal. Team Penske\u2019s Josef Newgarden<\/a> was the first out, missing the cut by 0.0169s. He was followed by Ed Carpenter Racing\u2019s pair of Alexander Rossi<\/a> and Christian Rasmussen<\/a>. Others out early included\u00a0AJ Foyt Racing rookie Caio Collet<\/a> and teammate Santino Ferrucci<\/a>, along with Juncos Hollinger Racing\u2019s Sting Ray Robb<\/a> and Arrow McLaren\u2019s Nolan Siegel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Qualifying – 2026\u00a0IndyCar Long Beach
\nAll Stats<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

We want your opinion!<\/p>\n

What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?<\/p>\n

Take our 5 minute survey.<\/a><\/p>\n

– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Felix Rosenqvist will lead the field to the green flag after winning pole for Sunday\u2019s Acura Grand Prix…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275001,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[119018,117476,65321,131,133,132,69116],"class_list":{"0":"post-275000","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-2026-indycar-long-beach-starting-lineup-felix-rosenqvist-beats-pato-ou2019ward-to-pole","9":"tag-felix-rosenqvist","10":"tag-indycar","11":"tag-long-beach","12":"tag-long-beach-headlines","13":"tag-long-beach-news","14":"tag-streets-of-long-beach"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275000\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}