David Malukas has qualified on pole position for the Good Ranchers 250, marking the first pole position of his IndyCar career. The American will share the front row with teammate Josef Newgarden, ahead of a surprising second row featuring the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing duo of Graham Rahal and Mick Schumacher.

The driver who already knew before qualifying that he would start the race from the back of the grid was Felix Rosenqvist. During free practice, the Meyer Shank Racing driver crashed in Turn 2 after just six laps, heavily damaging the #60 car.

Qualifying was run based on the reversed entrant points standings, which effectively meant the reversed finishing order from the race in St. Petersburg was used. As a result, big names such as Scott Dixon, Santino Ferrucci and Will Power had to make their qualifying attempts early in the session.

However, the first driver to make a real impression on track was Mick Schumacher. Despite his limited experience, he immediately showed strong pace with a fast qualifying run. It was therefore surprising that both Ferrucci and Dixon were unable to beat Schumacher’s time. Power did go faster than the German in his first lap, but pushed slightly over the limit on his second attempt and crashed in Turn 1.

Schumacher held the top spot until his teammate Graham Rahal went seven hundredths of a second faster over his two qualifying laps. Rahal’s time did not remain at the top for long, however, as David Malukas soon took to the track and went an impressive three tenths of a second faster with a high-risk qualifying run.

Malukas then had a slight advantage over most of his competitors as temperatures in Phoenix continued to rise during qualifying, making the track surface slightly slower. Josef Newgarden was unable to match the time set by his less experienced teammate, and driver after driver failed to beat Malukas’ benchmark.

Among the drivers who went out later in the session, almost everyone struggled with the warmer conditions and none were able to challenge for the top spot. As the winner of the race in St. Petersburg, Alex Palou was the last driver allowed to set a qualifying time, but he remained well off the leading pace and could do no better than tenth. That secured Malukas his first IndyCar pole position.

Full results of the qualifying session at Phoenix Raceway