Scott McLaughlin Kicks Off IndyCar Season With Pole, While Dennis Hauger Stuns In St. Pete Qualifying
The first qualifying session yielded a strange combination of expected and completely unexpected results.
It's weird to see a qualifying session that somehow made you say, "Yeah, that's about how I expected that to pan out," and also, "Holy crap, what did I just see?" But that was what we got to kick off the 2026 NTT IndyCar season.
Let's start with what we may have expected: Team Penske's Scott McLaughlin will lead the field to green in the No. 3 Chevrolet.
Last season was tough for Penske and for McLaughlin, as he was the only one of the team's drivers to not win a race in 2025.
But he's a monster in St. Petersburg and showed the kind of single-lap pace that could have him towards the front of the field in a lot of these races and potentially even a championship contender.
McLaughlin will share the front row with Andretti Global's Marcus Ericsson, who just missed out on a first-career IndyCar pole.
But then this is where things got weird.
In the Fast 6 — the final round of qualifying, which sets the first three rows of the grid — we had two Penskes (McLaughlin and David Malukas), one Ganassi (reigning champ Alex Palou), an Andretti (Ericsson), and not one, but two Dale Coyne Racing cars, driven by Romain Grosjean and rookie Dennis Hauger.
Now, IndyCar fans will remember Grosjean. He's an ex-Formula 1 driver who moved onto a solid IndyCar career and is historically very good in St. Pete.
However, his deal with the team came late in the offseason, and no one, not even him, thought they would be sniffing around the front of the grid with one car, let alone two.
And speaking of that second car, Hauger — the reigning Indy NXT champ and an F2 race winner — absolutely stunned everyone by qualifying third.
One spot ahead of four-time champ Palou.
If you watched Hauger in F2, you probably had a feeling he was going to dominate in Indy NXT, especially on road courses and street circuits.
You probably thought he'd be solid in IndyCar, too. But I promise you, no one saw that performance coming.
Not even him.
Hauger made his Indy NXT debut at this circuit last season, and he won.
It's obviously early, but I think it's safe to say Hauger is the rookie of the year favorite already.
Which is nuts because this class is great.
Other rookies include AJ Foyt Racing's Caio Collett in the No. 4 Chevrolet (he was Hauger's closest contender in Indy NXT) and Mick Schumacher, the former F1 and sports car driver and son of F1 legend Michael Schumacher, in the No. 47 Honda for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing.
While most of the teams in the Fast 6 have to be feeling good, some others… probably not as much.
McLaren failed to get any drivers into the Fast 6, which is definitely a disappointment for them.
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Meanwhile, Will Power's debut with Andretti Global has not gone according to plan. After a rough first practice, the veteran had a crash in the second, which meant that he qualified using a setup he hadn't gotten a taste of until he was taking it on a flying lap around St. Pete.
Not ideal, but the Australian — who has more poles than anyone in IndyCar history — handled it as well as he could and qualified a solid P13, all things considered.
This is shaping up to be a good one, kids.
You can catch the race on Sunday at 12 p.m. ET on Fox.