By Austin Lawton, Staff Writer

For the fifth straight race, Alex Palou and the No.10 DHL Chip Ganassi Racing Honda will start on pole, this time at Road America in Elkhart Lake, WI. 

“It was so tough,” Palou said. “Q1 I felt great. Q2 I struggled a ton. Yesterday I felt great, but this morning I struggled, as well. I knew it was going to be very tough to piece it together. My lap, it felt good. There’s always room to improve. You never know if there’s going to be someone that just pieces together even better than you. It’s always surprising. It’s always so fun and so tough to get it right.”

Palou becomes the latest driver to achieve five straight poles, tying former CGR driver, the late Alex Zanardi. Zanardi won the last four poles of the 1996 season and the first pole in the 1997 season. 

The Spaniard’s time of 1:43.6615 was three-tenths-of-a-second faster than second place starter, David Malukas (1:43.9542). This weekend will be the second consecutive race that Malukas has lost out on the pole to Palou, but despite that, Malukas isn’t frustrated. 

“For me, I know the mistakes I made in Q3,” Malukas said. “For me, I’m actually over the moon because here I am P2 on another road course, right? It feels really good. I feel like this before the season, it was ovals only. I worked so hard the off-season, even in between the races, the amount of simulators, looking at video, data. I look at video till I just get stick sick of it, learning, gain what I can. Now I can say road courses, street courses, ovals, it feel good that I’m always there on all three.”

Meyer Shank Racing continued their strong weekend, with both Marcus Armstrong and Felix Rosenqvist starting third and fourth, respectively. Armstrong was fastest in Friday’s only practice session, guiding his No.66 Honda while feeling under the weather. 

Marcus Ericsson brings his St. Louis form to Road America, qualifying fifth. 

SEE: XPEL Grand Prix at Road America Starting Grid 

The 2025 race at Road America saw hot temperatures, a stark contrast to this weekend.  Cooler temperatures arrive for race weekend at the 4.014-mile road course bringing in questions regarding if the red or black tires are preferred. 

Consensus across the paddock on Friday was that the black, primary tire will be the preferred race tire. Teams must run two stints on the red alternate tire, per the rulebook. After Saturday’s practice and qualifying running, the alternate improved in the changing, cool conditions. 

“I think yesterday yes, but today it was pretty clear that the alternates were better,” Palou said. “I think yesterday pretty much I would say 90% or maybe even more people thought that the alternates were not a big jump, like there were so many people that barely improved. There were some others that made huge gains.”