SALINAS, Calif — Felix Rosenqvist drove a flawless Firestone Fast Six session to score his second pole of the 2023 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season on Saturday. The mega lap coupled with mistakes from Scott McLaughlin and Christian Lundgaard left the Arrow McLaren Racing driver with the best view at the start of Sunday’s Firestone Grand Prix of Monterey (2:30 p.m. ET, NBC, INDYCAR Radio Network).

McLaughlin was only .0330-seconds from a pole last week in Portland and a week later, .0097-seconds off this time around. Each time he felt like he left a little something on the table.

“I dropped a wheel at (Turn) 10, the fast right-hander, just trying to get that extra little bit,” McLaughlin said. “The car was mega. I really feel bad for these guys on the XPEL Chevy. Congrats to Felix. It’s pretty awesome he got his last pole with the team there.”

Lundgaard, who broke the 23-year-old track record in the second round of the three round knockout qualifying session, was four-tenths quicker than Rosenqvist’s pole speed on the final lap around the 2.238-mile scenic California road course. Unfortunately, he made a mistake in the Corkscrew that ended his chances of giving him his third pole of the season too.

“We knew we were fast all weekend and it just proved that the car has been there all weekend,” Lundgaard said. “I wanted to get the No. 45 Hy-Vee Honda on the pole so we could finish the season with the most poles. It just wasn’t meant to be today. I pushed too hard and I saw it on the dash on the delta that I was faster than my Q2 lap so I went for it and it didn’t work. I paid the price for it.”

21 of the last 24 visits won from a top 3 starter (15 from the pole, 4 from 2nd). 2 of the 3 on Sunday belong to McLaren and RLL.

Penske and Ganassi however have won all 6 races on natural road courses this season and just went 1-2-3 here a year ago too.

Can anyone stop them on Sunday?

Roseqnvist is 1-for-78 in his career. Lundgaard is 1-for-34.

Maybe that bodes well for McLaughlin.

The thing is, McLaughlin, while starting second, he’s not had the best success while doing so. This season, he’s started in the top six 10 times including 8 on the front row. 7 of his last 8 races have been on the front row at that.

McLaughlin’s finishes from the front row have been 7th (Detroit), 6th (Toronto), 2nd and 5th (Iowa doubleheader), 2nd (Nashville), 5th (Gateway – 10 spot grid penalty), 9th (Portland). Can he pick up the win and end his 13 race winless streak?

Ironically enough, his win this season didn’t come from the front row. It came from 4th in Barber.

Maybe the winner will instead come from starting spots 4th, 5th, 6th.

22 of the 24 were won from a top 6 starter in general.

Penske and Ganassi have 4 of the top 6 starters.

Josef Newgarden (4th), Scott Dixon (5th) and Alex Palou (6th) fit this bill then.

For Dixon in 5th, He was 3rd in 2019 but 13th and 12th the last two years. Dixon has also finished 7th, 6th, 4th, 2nd, 1st and 3rd respectively on natural road courses in 2023 too. He’s finished 2nd, 2nd, 2nd, 3rd, 1st, 3rd, 3rd, 5th, 2nd, 1st, 17th, 4th, 2nd, 3rd, 3rd, 3rd, 12th in the last 17 season finales.

Maybe it’s a battle of Josef Newgarden (starts 4th) vs. Alex Palou (starts 6th). They finished 1-2 last year and started 11th and 25th in the process. On another repaved track earlier this season in Road America, they went 1-2 again.

Newgarden has finished 8th, 7th, 2nd here. He was runner-up that day in Road America. He’s also finished in the top 2 in 4 of the last 6 season finales including 3 straight years too (1st, 2nd, 2nd).

Palou won that Road America race and won this race from 11th last year. He was also runner-up in 2021 here.

On natural road courses in 2023, Palou has finished 5th, 1st, 1st, 1st, 7th and 1st. 

The thing is, this race has the potential to look crazy and maybe strategy comes into play.

Last year was a three stopper. Palou started on primaries and pit on Lap 19 for the alternates. He pit again on Lap 38 for the primary tires again only to pit for his final time 30 laps later on Lap 68. Newgarden also elected to start on the primary tires and pit on Lap 22 for reds. He pit again on Lap 35 for blacks and Lap 60 for reds to the finish.

Will Power was on the pole and started on the reds. He went until Lap 15 before going to scuffed blacks. He pit again on Lap 38 for blacks and again for the final time on Lap 67 for blacks.

8 of the top 10 started on alternates including all of the top six. It was those who started on primaries who benefitted. Sound familiar?

Just like last week.

However, this track is freshly paved and there’s been a lot of carnage on it.

There were 21 stoppages for off track excursions during the test on Thursday and the pair of practice sessions this weekend. There were 3 more in qualifying on Saturday.

As far as why so much carnage? Well it’s simple. The track being repaved and track position meaning so much here, you have to push.

As a result, if you get just slightly off the racing line, you become a passenger.

“It’s just tremendously loose offline,” Scott McLaughlin said. “It’s just train tracks out there right now. Yeah, watched the INDY NXT race with a lot of interest, just seeing how they raced, especially at the start. I said to myself, I really don’t want to be on the outside into one. Now I’m starting on the outside going into turn one (smiling).

“It is what’s. You just got to figure it out. But, yeah, there’s no grip out there. I feel like the pavement is worn in where we have been running. Everywhere else where we haven’t been running, it’s a bit polished like when Felix was running here.

“I’m sure it will wear in as the race goes on. That transition traditionally doesn’t bode for much passing.”

However, with so many drivers needing wins on Sunday in order to not go through the season winless, does that create chaos too?

“It is the last race of the year. The championship is sewn up. I’m sure there’s going to be some Kamikazes out there,” McLaughlin said.

Felix Rosenqvist hasn’t won in 60 races. He’s on the pole. McLaughlin hasn’t won since Barber (12 races ago). He starts 2nd. Rinus VeeKay hasn’t won since the 2021 Indy GP (45 races ago). He starts 7th. Will Power is riding a 27 race drought. He’ll start 8th. That’s 4 of the top 8 needing wins. Can they?

“You’ll fight pretty hard, I know that,” Power said on being winless. “You’ll fight pretty hard. If there’s someone there on the last lap, last corner, you haven’t got a win, yeah, certainly will be floating through your mind about what you might just do (smiling).

Callum Ilott was on the front row last year but fell out early. He feels the effects of this repave this time around too.

“Yeah, super grippy track. It’s incredible this repave how much performance it extracts from the cars and the drivers,” Ilott said.

“Yeah, putting it together, it’s tough. For some reason, it’s very knife edgy, lots of guys making mistakes, myself included. I had a little gravel moment.

“But yeah, it’s an interesting place. Real drivers’ track, and it’s taken it to another level this year.”

Ilott says that if you’re under the limit and comfortable, you’re too slow. That’s why everyone is making these mistakes he feels because it’s just enticing you to go faster and faster, and then suddenly it’s not allowing you to do the same thing as you did the lap before, and you kind of end up going off.

“It’s rewarding to be consistent. Obviously it’s rewarding to the team, as well, to not have to be putting new parts on the car,” he continued.

“But it’s tough. It’s real tough. For some reason, it’s a pain in the ass to put together a lap.”

Monterey used to be an older track surface with tons of tire fall off. Similar to Darlington in sense of low grip, high tire wear. You have to slow down to go fast. Be smooth.

This offseason, the entire track surface has been repaved. It changes the way you drive this track. You can actually attack every corner now.

“Yeah, there’s definitely that here,” Will Power said. “Corners that are pretty high commitment. You don’t have much time to rest. It’s a pretty rhythm track. You’re always in a corner. A bit like a go-kart track. A lot of corners to get right, a lot. Easy to make a mistake. As you’ve seen the times, if you mess up one corner, moves you a lot of positions back.”

Christian Lundgaard agreed.

“The track has been resurfaced so I think everyone will come there with a new mindset of perhaps what we showed up at Road America with, setup wise,” said Lundgaard.

As a result, it’s become a quite a physical track.

 “It’s fast. It’s so fast. It’s incredible how heavy it is, as well,” Kyle Kirkwood said. “Like the steering effort is like astronomical, and I can only imagine with full fuel, and I’m thinking about it — thinking about yesterday, man, when we add a little bit of weight to the car, I don’t think anyone is going to be able to turn around this place.

“Yeah, it’s fast, but it’s a lot of fun. It’s cool to go there and go out and just do a lap because of how fast it is.”

Kirkwood said that there is a realistic concern about drivers retiring from the race early due to how physical this track has now become.

“It’s definitely a concern. If it’s going to be as heavy as it just was there on the alternate tires throughout the race or heavier, I think you’ll see people crash because they just can’t turn the wheel. I think that’s very possible,” he noted.

Graham Rahal said even with cooler temperatures, the race will be the most physical of the season inside the car too.

Will the drivers and teams dial it in for a cleaner race now or will it be one of attrition?

Last year, there was 1 caution for 3 laps.

There’s been 5 combined cautions over the last three races on the season overall. Also, 92.1% of the laps since August were run under green flag conditions too. 72 of 80 laps in Nashville, 79 of 85 for the Gallagher Grand Prix, 238 of 260 at World Wide Technology Raceway and now 104 of 110 in Portland.

Road America was a repave but we saw four cautions for 10 laps.