Alex Palou emerged with his first street course pole for tomorrow’s Chevrolet Grand Prix of Detroit.

The 2021 NTT IndyCar Series champion found himself in a pally Firestone Fast Six batter against teammates Marcus Ericcson and Scott Dixon along with Andretti Autosport’s Romain Grosjean with a Team Penske brigade of Indy 500 winner Josef Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin.

Palou logged his second straight IndyCar pole right out of the gate by lapping the 1.645-mile street circuit in 1:01.8592s.

“We started on used alternate tires, but they didn’t feel very good, so switched right away to our second set,” he said. “It feels good [to have two consecutive poles].  We’ve had a great car all weekend, all year really, so qualifying was just about maximizing everything we had.  It’s a crazy track, tight and short.  It’s going to be tough tomorrow in the race, but we’ll try to make it happen.”

His lone challenge came from McLaughlin who came up .2 seconds short on his final run to take his first front row start of the season. Grosjean recovered from careening into the runoff at session’s start to log third alongside Scott Dixon in fourth.

Newgarden completed the top five as Ericcson completed the session in sixth after going off track early.

A potential pole run for Andretti Autosport’s Kyle Kirkwood came to a grinding halt in Q2. The Long Beach winner hit the wall in Turn 7 and will start 12th.