Scott McLaughlin will start the Bommarito Automotive 500 at Gateway from pole position for the second consecutive year. Despite having to qualify earlier than his competitors, McLaughlin was a fraction of a second faster than the surprising Felix Rosenqvist, who qualified second. David Malukas qualified third, ahead of Josef Newgarden in fourth place.

The qualification was conducted based on the entrant points championship, which meant that the slowest cars had to qualify first and the fastest cars in the championship qualified last.

The practice session experienced a false start with the first two qualification runs. Katherine Legge's crew didn't even bother to send her through the technical inspection, resulting in her being unable to participate in qualifying. The Dale Coyne Racing driver was the slowest in the free practice and received a nine-position grid penalty due to an illegal engine change, suggesting that the team did not want to risk the car during qualifying.

While Legge didn't manage a qualifying run, her teammate Jack Harvey fared little better: during his run, he stopped due to apparent hybrid issues and was unable to set a lap time.

The first driver to set a quick lap time was David Malukas, who was more than 2 mph faster than the rest in the earlier qualification attempts. Malukas had set the fastest time in the only free practice earlier in the day, making him a serious contender for the pole position.

Malukas's quick time stayed at the top of the list for a while until teammate Felix Rosenqvist took his qualifying attempt. Despite a moment in his second round, the Swede managed to go a fraction of a second faster.

Rosenqvist's time stayed at the top of the list until Scott McLaughlin surpassed it. Colton Herta seemed capable of going even faster, but lost control of his car coming out of Turn 1 and slid backward into the wall in Turn 2. Remarkably, the damage was limited to the rear wing of his Andretti Global car, allowing the American to finish his run. Ultimately, Herta was the slowest of all drivers who set a lap time.

Herta's incident was bad news for McLaughlin, who knew that as the track was cleared, the temperature would drop - making the track faster. Will Power also did not improve his time, so all eyes turned to the Ganassi duo Scott Dixon and Alex Palou. The two drivers, who also had a nine-position grid penalty, surprisingly did not go faster than McLaughlin. This meant that the Penske driver will start from pole position at Gateway for the second year in a row!

With Rosenqvist's grid penalty, Malukas will start the race from second place, ahead of Newgarden and Power.

Full results of the qualifying session at Gateway