Alex Palou took pole for the Freedom 250 Grand Prix of Washington, D.C. on Saturday, winning the NTT P1 Award with a lap of 56.8993 seconds in the No. 10 OpenAI Chip Ganassi Racing Honda. It was his seventh pole of 2026 and the 19th of his INDYCAR SERIES career.
The result mattered because this was the first-ever motor race on the streets of the District of Columbia, and the pole sets the tone for a 250-mile race that will run 147 laps around a seven-turn, 1.7-mile temporary circuit near the National Mall. Live coverage begins at 11:30 a.m. ET Sunday on FOX and FOX One, with INDYCAR Radio powered by OnlyBulls also carrying the race.
Palou enters Sunday with a 133-point lead over Kyle Kirkwood and four races left in the season, which is why every qualifying spot behind him still felt like part of the title picture. He called the outing “incredible” and said his car “was on rails,” a fitting description for a lap that separated him from the rest of the Firestone Fast Six.
Kirkwood had already raised the bar in round one by setting the new circuit qualifying record at 56.7729, then came back to take second at 57.4661 in the No. 27 Sam’s Club Honda of Andretti Global. He said Palou “made us look silly out there,” but also admitted, “It wasn’t that easy,” after seeing a lap he thought was stellar beaten by six-tenths. Scott McLaughlin qualified third at 57.6200, Christian Rasmussen was fourth at 57.8892, Marcus Armstrong took fifth at 58.8145, and David Malukas completed the Firestone Fast Six at 1 minute, 10.6709 after clipping the concrete wall with his right rear wheel in Turn 1.
That mix of speed and pressure is what makes Sunday hard to predict. Palou has won three of the five previous street races this season, and this one gives him another chance to turn control into points on a layout that punishes small mistakes. He has the pole, the lead, and now one more chance to prove the Saturday pace was the start of something bigger.
