David Malukas earns Phoenix IndyCar pole as Will Power…

David Malukas delivered a smooth run to capture pole for the Good Ranchers 250 at Phoenix Raceway on Saturday.

The 24-year-old Chicago native, who is Team Penske’s newest driver in the #12 Chevrolet, ripped around the 1-mile tri-oval with a flat-out two-lap run with an average of 175.383mph to go to the top of the scoring pylon. It’s the first career pole for Malukas.

“Oh, man, finally, I’m just so happy,” Malukas said. “We had so many P2s. The story of all of last season is we wait until the last few guys and then, boom, we get P2. But finally, we got it! I think the track got in our favor a little bit, it looked like it was getting a bit worse, but we got it. Feels so good.”

Nicknamed ‘the oval king’ by the FOX Sports broadcast team, his Penske teammate Josef Newgarden, a two-time Indianapolis 500 champion, was unable to overthrow Malukas in qualifying, managing a respectable run of 174.548mph two-lap average to start second.

RLL and Schumacher shine

Graham Rahal’s #15 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing (RLL) Honda got loose at the end of his run, but not before temporarily going to the top after two flying laps with an average of 173.993mph. He’ll start third.

RLL rookie Mick Schumacher was the first driver to go out, running a pair of clean laps for an average of 173.667mph to slot fourth for his oval debut.

“Yeah, pretty quick, pretty short, but not great,” Schumacher said. “Great to have the experience. I think we managed to get a good couple of laps together, so hopefully we'll be right in there in the mix and we can manage to have a good start.”

Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin ended up fifth after a two-lap run of 173.448mph.

ECR’s Alexander Rossi was able to log a 173.389mph outing, ending up sixth. Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward’s promising run was shot with a handful of a second lap, nailing a combined run of 173.344mph to snag seventh.

Reigning and four-time IndyCar Series champion Alex Palou, last week’s winner, could only get up to 10th in his qualifying run, hitting an average of 172.980mph in the #10 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda.

Six-time series champion Scott Dixon struggled during his qualifying run, hitting a 172.074mph two-lap average for 15th in the #9 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda.

The #21 ECR Chevrolet of Christian Rasmussen, who won the most recent short oval race at the Milwaukee Mile last year, struggled to get going, only mustering a run at 171.540mph. He’ll roll off 17th in tomorrow’s race.

Another rookie, Dennis Hauger, had a less-than-stellar outing after plowing to a 169.818mph two-lap run in the #19 Dale Coyne Racing Honda. He’ll start 22nd.

Power slams the wall

WILL POWER SPINS IN QUALS 🫣 pic.twitter.com/nT5YDAo9T0
— NTT INDYCAR SERIES (@IndyCar) March 6, 2026

The trouble continued for Will Power, who was the fourth to go out and was on his second of two laps when the backend of his #26 Andretti Global Honda snapped around and backed into the Turn 3 wall. He’ll have to come from 24th on the grid.

“I'm good,” Power said. “My knee hit the dash when it came up, so just pretty sore but nothing broken or anything.”

When asked if he’d be cleared to drive by FOX Sports reporter Kevin Lee, Power said, “I don't know man. I just don’t know what happened, the car is so much looser than we were this morning. It’s very strange. That was tough. The car had been very comfortable there all day. Man, rough start to the year, for sure. These sort of things happening are not good.”

Felix Rosenqvist, who crashed in opening practice, did not qualify after Meyer Shank Racing was unable to repair his #60 Honda in time and will start 25th (last).

Photos from Phoenix - Friday

Full starting lineup

cla	#	driver	team	time	mph
1	12	David Malukas	Team Penske	20.4928	175.671
2	2	Josef Newgarden	Team Penske	20.6046	174.718
3	3	Scott McLaughlin	Team Penske	20.6868	174.024
4	15	Graham Rahal	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	20.6391	174.426
5	47	Mick Schumacher	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	20.7163	173.776
6	20	Alexander Rossi	ECR	20.7483	173.508
7	5	Patricio O'Ward	Arrow McLaren	20.6000	174.757
8	76	Rinus VeeKay	Juncos Hollinger Racing	20.7626	173.389
9	6	Nolan Siegel	Meyer Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian	20.7583	173.425
10	27	Kyle Kirkwood	Andretti Global	20.7941	173.126
11	10	Alex Palou	Chip Ganassi Racing	20.8517	172.648
12	77	Ray Robb Sting	Juncos Hollinger Racing	20.8594	172.584
13	66	Marcus Armstrong	Meyer Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian	20.8530	172.637
14	28	Marcus Ericsson	Andretti Global	20.8614	172.568
15	9	Scott Dixon	Chip Ganassi Racing	20.8776	172.434
16	45	Louis Foster	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	20.9078	172.185
17	7	Christian Lundgaard	Arrow McLaren	20.9625	171.735
18	21	Christian Rasmussen	ECR	20.8591	172.587
19	8	Kyffin Simpson	Chip Ganassi Racing	20.9343	171.967
20	18	Romain Grosjean	Dale Coyne Racing	21.0706	170.854
21	14	Santino Ferrucci	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	20.9242	172.050
22	19	Dennis Hauger	Dale Coyne Racing	21.1375	170.313
23	4	Caio Collet	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	21.4158	168.100
24	26	Will Power	Andretti Global	--	--
25	60	Felix Rosenqvist	Meyer Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian	--	--