Overview
- Kyle Kirkwood delivered the fastest qualifying run on Saturday to take the NTT P1 Award and will lead the field from pole at Nashville Superspeedway.
- David Malukas crashed in practice, was taken to a local hospital for evaluation, missed qualifying, and was later cleared by INDYCAR to race on Sunday.
- Josef Newgarden qualified second while still recovering from his May Indianapolis 500 crash, and he will join Kirkwood on the front row.
- Several established drivers posted surprising lows on the grid with Mick Schumacher, Felix Rosenqvist, Christian Lundgaard, David Malukas, and Graham Rahal all 15th or worse.
- The pole point cut Kirkwood’s gap to championship leader Alex Palou from 56 to 55 points and a tight top-10 qualifying spread under 1.5 mph sets expectations for close racing Sunday evening.