Scott Dixon gets the first crack at the Indianapolis 500 pole on Saturday morning, opening a qualifying weekend that will sort the 33-car field and decide which drivers stay in the hunt for the front row. The five-time Indianapolis 500 pole winner will begin his four-lap timed run at 11 a.m. ET, with the first wave of attempts setting the order for the rest of the weekend.
Thirty-three drivers will have the chance to win the pole, but only the fastest nine after Saturday will move on to Sunday’s Top 12 session. Cars ranked 10 through 15 will return for the Fast 15 round at 4 p.m. ET, before the Fast 12 begins at about 5 p.m. ET and the Firestone Fast Six follows around 6:35 p.m. ET. Starting positions 16 through 33 will be locked in when Saturday’s session ends at 5:50 p.m. ET.
The pole picture is crowded, and it has a familiar shape. Five drivers in this year’s field have already won the Indianapolis 500 pole: Dixon with five, Helio Castroneves with four, Ed Carpenter with three, and Scott McLaughlin and Alex Palou with one each. Will Power, despite his record 71 poles in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES, still has not won the Indianapolis 500 pole, a notable blank on a resume built on qualifying speed. Robert Shwartzman, meanwhile, is the defending pole winner after taking the top spot as a rookie last year.
Fast Friday suggested the race for pole will be tight. Felix Rosenqvist posted the fastest overall lap, Alexander Rossi was second and McLaughlin was third, while team Penske drivers looked confident after turning limited laps. Yet Friday speed can be misleading at Indianapolis, where teams do not always get much clean track time alone and the qualifying format punishes even small mistakes. McLaughlin was quickest on Fast Friday last year too, then ended qualifying in 10th, a reminder that practice pace does not automatically carry over.
Palou also enters the weekend with momentum. He was No. 1 in Tuesday practice, No. 2 on Wednesday and went on to win last year’s race from the sixth starting position. That matters because the recent history points to track position paying off in May: over the past 10 years, the winner’s average starting position has been 6.1. It is one reason teams are treating qualifying as more than a shot at a trophy and more like a map of what Sunday in the race could look like.
Conor Daly is one of the drivers trying to turn practice speed into something bigger. He turned the fastest lap of Wednesday’s session and had the 13th-best lap Friday as he tries to give Dreyer & Reinbold Racing its best starting position since Robbie Buhl was second in 2002. Daly’s best Indianapolis 500 starts are 11th, achieved in 2019 and last year, so the opportunity this weekend is to move beyond that ceiling and into the part of the grid that changes the tone of the month.
Dario Franchitti, analyzing the field on FS2, said Daly “looks very, very strong,” and added, “So does Rossi, and McLaughlin.” That kind of praise fits the shape of this qualifying weekend: no runaway favorite, no guarantee that the fastest practice lap will hold up when the cars go alone for four laps under pressure, and no margin for a bad run when the field is only 33 deep and the schedule leaves little room to recover.
The extra round in this year’s format exists because the field has only the required 33 entries, which means every session matters and the fast lane narrows quickly. Dixon’s first run on Saturday will set the tone, but the real story may be whether the usual names can defend their edge against drivers who were quicker in practice and cleaner on the tires. By Sunday evening, the front of the grid should look like the start of a race inside the race.
