INDIANAPOLIS — A rookie is on the pole, the second place starter is in a hunt to win this year’s NTT IndyCar Series championship and the hunted for this year’s title starts 12th in Friday’s Harvest Grand Prix (3:30 p.m. ET, USA, INDYCAR Radio Network).

Welcome to Indianapolis.

Rinus VeeKay scored his first career pole and is after his first career Indy Car win. In six Road to Indy road course starts here at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, he finished on the podium in four of them. He also was the fastest teenager to ever qualify for the Indianapolis 500 and is coming into the weekend with three top 10 finishes in his last four starts.

“I like Indy,” VeeKay said during his post qualifying zoom chat.

I’d say so. But, can he hold off two Penske’s and three Andretti’s sitting behind him?

Newgarden has to go for broke and win Friday’s race. He made up 45 points over the last three races on Scott Dixon and with Dixon starting 12th, this is a prime opportunity for Newgarden to take off even more points from his now 71 point deficit with three races remaining in the season.

“I think this year is probably the least pressure-packed for us,” Newgarden said of this weekend. “We’re certainly in the chase position. We’re not being chased. We don’t really have much to lose. We could slip backwards in the championship from our second-place position. If you’re not winning the championship, I don’t know how much you weight that. You really don’t. From our side, we don’t weight it that much. The championship is really all that matters.

“There’s not a lot of pressure to take risk. But like I was saying before, we don’t ever really stray away from our normal plan. We’re always trying to maximize points. If that means taking a little bit of risk at one point in the race to maximize the points, we’ll do that. Maybe it’s dialing back the risk to maximize the points.

“We really don’t approach weekends differently. It’s always the same goal. I think that part doesn’t change. If you are going to say is it easier or harder, I’d say it’s a little bit easier to go out there and try to make the most of the weekend. We don’t have a lot to protect at this point.”

Dixon meanwhile, may need to alter his plan. He said that he’s going to be as aggressive as he normally is, but when starting 12th and in the middle of the spots that typically sees an opening lap crash on the opening lap of the road course race, he may need to play it safe on Lap 1.

“For us, we just have to treat it like any other race weekend and try to get maximum points,” Dixon said. “The obvious goal is to go out there and try to win, but unfortunately there’s 23, 24 others that have the same goal. Try to do better than we did at the last doubleheader at Mid-Ohio where I definitely made a very large mistake, that gave away some pretty easy points there.”

Dixon can still wrap up this title this weekend with some certain scenarios going his way. If he’s going to win his sixth championship, he need to at the very least get some top fives and put the pressure back on Newgarden.

Colton Herta is coming off of a win at Mid-Ohio and hoping to catch Newgarden for second in the championship. He needs to make up 58 points now in three races to do that. That’s hard to do with Newgarden starting one row in front of him on Friday.

“I mean, I think if you’re not going for the championship, you’re kind of mindset is to win races,” Herta said. “That’s really the mindset. Obviously don’t overextend it and throw a good result away. I have a little bit to lose.

“Obviously we need to do well. If we really do want to get second place in the championship, we need to win another race. I think we do need a little bit of help from Josef on this weekend.

“But, yeah, like I said, if you’re not really in the championship, I think the goal for everyone should be to win races. That’s what we’re going to try and do.”

Will Power starts alongside of Herta in fourth and is eyeing a fourth win in eight tries on the 2.439-mile layout. While he would like to get up to the top three of the standings, he’s not going to take many risks because when you do, it never works.

Felix Rosenqvist and Marcus Ericsson say that their best things to do to help Dixon for his pursuit of the championship is to score as many points as possible to keep Newgarden from doing so. Rosenqvist starts seventh with Ericsson 15th.

Rosenqvist, said that he’s had strong cars this season but frustrated with how the races have gone with bad luck.

He’s trying to get into the top 10 of points again so he also may play it safe.

So will Conor Daly.

He has speed but was caught out by Satos off course moment without turning a lap on his reds.

“We made some great improvements from practice to qualifying,” said Daly. “The U.S. Air Force Chevy was so much better. It was a shame we weren’t able to  run on red tires. Our time on black tires was actually better than our teammate’s, which is really encouraging because Rinus (VeeKay) has always been strong on the black tires. We had so much of a time gain on the reds when we were here on July 4th;  we were really wanted to see what we had this time. It is what it is, though.We know we have a good car. We made some great improvements. Tomorrow should be a lot of fun and we’ll go to the front.”

Daly enters the final three races of the NTT IndyCar Series season in an interesting predictament. The Indiana native wants to win. I mean, who doesn’t? But, to win in the NTT IndyCar Series, sometimes you have to take risks. 

Strategy plays are huge, especially on this 2.439-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course. While you’d think Daly and his Ed Carpenter Racing team would be in a situation to just swing for the fences and go for broke, they’re unfortunately not at a luxury to do so. 

Daly personally could, but the No. 20 Chevrolet needs the points. That entrant is 23rd in the entrant standings. They trail the No. 14 Chevrolet for AJ Foyt Racing by just one points for the ever so critical 22nd place in the standings. Why this is important is, only the top 22 in the entrant points receive the leaders circle payout. 

With how this year has gone in the middle of a pandemic, losing out on that bonus money could be the difference in being on the grid next year or not. 

The car Daly is piloting needs to get into the top 22. They’re also only two points shy of Marco Andretti’s car for 21st and 19 points from the second Foyt car (No. 4 Chevrolet) for 19th. 

That’s part why Sebastien Bourdais is now in the 14 and not Dalton Kellett. That car is close to dropping out. In turn, it’s why it puts Daly in an interesting situation for the final three races of the season. 

“Honestly we just go for points,” Daly said of this weekend now with that situation facing them. “I talked to Ed (Carpenter) about that this week. He was like if we have a chance to win on a strategy swing, we might just stay where we are because we need the points. I respect that. 

“I’m here to be a team man. We’ve had a lot of points that was taken away from us in a weird situations. I think we can do it. Obviously, we want to have a good solid weekend in the top 10. If we can do that, than we’ll accomplish our goal.”

The Andretti cars won’t be conservative. Other than Herta, they rest don’t care where they finish in points now.

Alexander is going for wins and wins only. He has no podiums on the Indy road course but two straight on the year.

“I’ve got to be honest: For the first time in five years around here, I feel like we have a pretty good car. I’m really happy  about that. The team did a good job. This (IMS road course) has been a big weakness for us. The NAPA / AutoNation Honda was good. It was unfortunate that we didn’t get to do reds (alternate tires) because of the red flag rules, but I think the car is really good and I’m excited for tomorrow.”

Also, will starting position matter? Four of the last five years have seen the pole winner win this race. Five of the six races run saw the winner come from the top 2 Rows. Pagenaud, started eighth last year in his win.

Want to win both days too? Better at least make the Fast Six.

The big reason to that is, we’ve seen chaos on the opening lap in almost every year. The only year we didn’t was in 2017 and again in July.

Another big reason to that is how tight Turn 1 is and how moves are being made into it to gain spots on track.

If you made it past Lap 1, pit strategy follows.

This race overall has seen three or fewer cautions in the last five years. When four of those five races had a first lap incident, you can see that this race has been run clean for a majority of the way.