Palou has a poor qualifying run that tightens IndyCar championship ahead of the finale

LEBANON, Tenn. (AP) — Alex Palou's poor qualifying run and pending engine penalty dramatically tightened the IndyCar championship race the day before the season finale at Nashville Superspeedway.

Palou of Spain has a 33-point lead over Australian driver Will Power and needs only to finish ninth to win his third title in four years.

But, after Saturday's slow qualifying run, his cushion will be deflated to a meager seven points based on “points as they run” when the race begins Sunday.

“Yeah, that wasn’t ideal,” Palou said after qualifying. He said the car was far more comfortable in morning practice and his No. 10 crew would try to figure out went wrong before Saturday’s final practice session. Rain limited the final practice to a 15-minute session and Palou wound up 10th fastest. Power was back in 19th.

“The first lap wasn’t so bad. The second lap was just really, really bad,” Palou said. “Not what we wanted. Not what we needed. But, yeah, we need to move from 24th tomorrow.”

The title fight is realistically only between Palou and Power; Power's Team Penske teammate Scott McLaughlin will be mathematically eliminated as soon as Palou starts Sunday and McLaughlin has joked on social media all week about all the evil ways he could keep Palou from starting.

Palou, though, is unflappable and wasn't bothered in the least about accepting IndyCar's nine-place penalty on the starting grid for an unapproved engine change. He just figured he was going to lose nine spots from wherever he qualified and drive his Honda through the field and to the title.

But in a rare bad day for the Chip Ganassi Racing driver, his run was slow and he was 15th on the timing and scoring tower. Once the penalty is applied, Palou will drop back to 24th for Sunday's start.

Power, meanwhile, qualified fourth and was grinning on pit road as he saw where Palou ended up. He knows he already had his shot to take control of the championship two weeks ago in Milwaukee when Palou suffered an engine issue that kept him from starting the race.

Even though Palou eventually saved his day with a 19th-place finish, Power flushed the miracle opening away by spinning on his own and finishing 10th on a day he led 64 laps. McLaughlin won the race instead for Penske.

And, Power is in some strange beef with Scott Dixon, who he believes has been racing dirty lately and tried to run him off course a race ago at Milwaukee to benefit Dixon teammate Palou.

Power had reached a point where it sounded as if he'd essentially resigned himself to Dixon unfairly intervening on behalf of Palou. (Newgarden and McLaughlin have both said they'd concede a win if needed to help Power).

Power's resolve is that he's finishing second in the final standings no matter what happens, but for Dixon, a bad day could prevent the six-time champion from finishing in the top-five of the standings for the first time since 2016.

Dixon, who was runner-up to Palou in last year's title race, needed a runner-up finish at Milwaukee to move from sixth to fifth ahead of the finale.

Palou, meanwhile, can still win the championship by finishing ninth or better. It would be back-to-back titles for the Spaniard, who also won the championship in 2021 in his first season with Ganassi.

Although IndyCar raced at Nashville Superspeedway from 2001 through 2008, Palou had never been on the track before Saturday. Nashville will be the first concrete oval race of his career.

Power finished 11th in his only career race at the superspeedway, the 2008 final visit. He was thrilled with qualifying.

“That's as good as I could do right there. I can never ask for more than that,” Power said. “Would have been nice to get a pole, but that's life. Just do what we can in the race tomorrow, you know how these things roll. If it's our day, it will be our day. If not, we'll try again next year.”

Power is a two-time IndyCar champion, with his 2022 title sandwiched by Palou's pair of crowns.

This race was supposed to be run in downtown Nashville for a fourth consecutive year, but race promoter Scott Borchetta and Big Machine Label Group moved it to the superspeedway because of disruptive construction on the Tennessee Titans' new stadium. The downtown event had been so popular that IndyCar gifted it the season finale, and the street race was being billed as one of the biggest events on this year's schedule.

But when Borchetta got a look at the the course revisions required to avoid the construction, he found the plan to be unfeasible. He already had moved the race to Speedway Motorsports-owned Nashville Superspeedway when the NFL schedule was released, and with the Titans set to host the Jets on Sunday, Borchetta said he would have had to cancel the finale outright if it was still scheduled to go head-to-head downtown with an NFL game.

Kirkwood wins pole

Kyle Kirkwood of Andretti Global earned his second career pole, and first on an oval, in Saturday qualifying.

Kirkwood had a two-lap average speed of 201.520 mph to put his No. 27 Honda at the front of the field for the start on the 1.33-mile concrete oval.

“I’m stoked right now,” Kirkwood said. “It’s huge for our season to end off with a pole. I was a little upset we didn’t get a win or a pole (this season), and this is our final chance to do it, and we got it done.”

Nashville resident and two-time reigning Indianapolis 500 winner Josef Newgarden qualified second and will be on the front row for what will be the first race ever at the Tennessee oval. Newgarden has won 10 of the last 17 oval races.

Felix Rosenqvist qualified third for Meyer Shank Racing. Power, in qualifying fourth, failed to earn a pole in a season for the first time since his 2008 rookie season. Power's 63 career poles are an IndyCar record.

Santino Ferrucci, who earlier this week signed a multiyear extension with AJ Foyt Racing, qualified fifth. Ferrucci has the car in position to finish at least 10th in the final season standings, which would be both the best of his career and first Foyt car to finish inside the top-10 since 2002.

He also said in Nashville that this is the first time in his career he's had the next year's plans signed actively during the season. He said he's never not gone into an offseason uncertain about his plans.

David Malukas, who will be Ferrucci's teammate at Foyt next year, put two Meyer Shank Racing cars in the top six with his qualifying run.

Power, Scott Dixon and Graham Rahal are the only drivers in Sunday's field to have previously raced at the concrete oval. Dixon won IndyCar's three final races at the track and joked after his podium finish at Milwaukee two weeks ago that a fourth consecutive win was “a done deal.”

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AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing

Jenna Fryer, The Associated Press