re: 2023 IndyCar Season - R17 Laguna Seca 9/10 2:30 pm ET (NBC)

After a random drawing, here is the Saturday qualifying order. Since conditions can change drastically, it's possible the early runners have an advantage since track temperatures will surely rise into the afternoon. If the temperatures fall late in the afternoon there may be a rush to re-qualify at the end of the day.

I believe they are still using the two-lane system after the intial qualifying runs are done. In the priority lane you can get on the track fast, but you must give up your already-qualified position before starting your run. If you start from the regular lane, you can abort your run and keep your previous qualifying speed.

Indianapolis 500 qualifying order

01 Ryan Hunter-Reay
02 Colton Herta
03 Will Power
04 Helio Castroneves
05 Marco Andretti
06 Marcus Ericsson
07 Christian Lundgaard
08 Alexander Rossi
09 Scott Dixon
10 Simon Pagenaud
11 Benjamin Pedersen
12 Sting Ray Robb
13 Felix Rosenqvist
14 Tony Kanaan
15 Ed Carpenter
16 R.C. Enerson
17 Jack Harvey
18 Conor Daly
19 Devlin DeFrancesco
20 Graham Rahal
21 Rinus VeeKay
22 Pato O'Ward
23 Callum Ilott
24 Stefan Wilson
25 Takuma Sato
26 David Malukas
27 Santino Ferrucci
28 Alex Palou
29 Romain Grosjean
30 Kyle Kirkwood
31 Katherine Legge
32 Scott McLaughlin
33 Augustin Canapino
34 Josef Newgarden


Edit: A couple of notes I forgot to mention earlier...

1. I heard Pato O'Ward say in a couple of interviews that the new aerodynamic bits aren't going to help the racing. The problem has been that in a train of cars, the first three or four cars have a chance to race and pass, but the air gets worse beyond that and cars behind the third or fourth car are stuck in the train. O'Ward says the situation has not improved this year.

2. On Friday we had our first engine failure. At the end of the day on his last run, Jack Harvey's Honda engine spewed smoke. It was later confirmed that the engine expired and will be replaced for Saturday.