It was a dominant day for Team Penske at World Wide Technology Raceway, as Will Power and Scott McLaughlin locked out the front row during qualifying for Sunday night’s primetime Bommarito Automotive Group 500 presented by Axalta and Valvoline, the first scheduled nighttime NTT INDYCAR SERIES race held on a Sunday.
Will Power claimed his fifth career pole at the 1.25-mile oval with a blistering two-lap average speed of 180.329 mph (49.9088 seconds), marking his first pole of the 2024 season and the 71st of his storied career — further extending his all-time INDYCAR pole record.
“I sent it a lot,” Power said after his run. “I knew you would have to. You’d have to drive it flat in (Turns) 3 and 4. I wasn’t quite flat, but I was very, very close.”
Power’s performance earned him a spot at the front of the 27-car field for tonight’s race (7:00 p.m. CT, FOX, INDYCAR Radio Network, SiriusXM). His previous poles at WWTR came in 2017, 2020, 2021, and 2022 — with a victory at the event in 2018.
Teammate Scott McLaughlin narrowly missed the top spot, clocking a two-lap average of 179.783 mph (50.0603 seconds) for his third front-row start of the year.
Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward qualified third at 179.190 mph, followed by AJ Foyt Racing’s David Malukas in fourth. Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden, the defending race winner who has won four of the last five events at WWTR, will start fifth with a season-best qualifying effort of 178.910 mph. The result gave Chevrolet a clean sweep of the top five grid positions.
As fans gear up for an action-packed Sunday, Team Penske’s front-row sweep sets the tone for what could be a thrilling showdown under the lights at World Wide Technology Raceway.
The Barn 