Qualifying Report: GoPro Grand Prix of Sonoma

SONOMA, Calif.—For the final race of the 2017 Verizon IndyCar Series, Conor Daly just barely missed advancing to the next round in his No. 4 ABC Supply Chevrolet, however, he did post his best start here at Sonoma Raceway. He will start 13th which also matches the best start for the ABC Supply team (recorded by Takuma Sato in 2013) at this 12-turn, 2.52 mile road course.

“I think I’m pretty happy with what happened today,” said Daly, who posted a time of 1 minute, 17.1016 seconds. “We put a pretty solid lap together and we missed it by just a hair. We made a huge jump forward from where we’d been and that’s what we have to keep doing. Our weekends are always about progression and we keep trying to get better. I have no doubt we’ll continue to improve through the warmup and hopefully the race as well.”

Carlos Munoz did not fare quite so well; his best lap time of 1 minute, 17.2507 seconds lands him in 22nd spot on the grid.

“We just haven’t been there this weekend,” said Munoz, referring to the struggles the team had this weekend in the practice sessions. “The group was quite hard, in the second group everyone went faster. It is a long race tomorrow and anything can happen, the tire degradation is a lot here on this track. We have some work to do and we’ll see what we have tomorrow.”

Josef Newgarden won the pole with a sizzling lap of 1 minute, 15.5205 seconds (113.691mph). His teammates followed making the first two rows all Team Penske: Will Power, Simon Pagenaud and Helio Castroneves. Rounding out the Firestone Fast 6 were Takuma Sato and Scott Dixon.

Teams have a 30 minute final practice session tomorrow morning. The GoPro Grand Prix will be broadcast live tomorrow afternoon starting at 6:30 p.m. ET on NBC Sports Network.