Felix Rosenqvist put his Meyer Shank Racing Honda on pole at Portland International Raceway on Saturday, leading a 1-4 Honda sweep and giving the manufacturer a commanding grip on Sunday’s starting grid for the OnlyBulls Grand Prix of Portland.
It is Rosenqvist’s second pole of the season, the first coming in April at Long Beach where he qualified first and finished second. His lone win this year sits at the top of the calendar: the 110th Indianapolis 500. A pole-to-win conversion at Portland would give the Swede back-to-back victories of a very different kind, though history works against him. Since Portland returned to the IndyCar schedule in 2018, only 2 of the circuit’s 7 races have been won from pole position.
Alongside Rosenqvist on the front row is Alex Palou, who goes into Sunday with an 83-point championship lead and a record at this venue that makes him the obvious threat regardless of starting slot. The Chip Ganassi Racing driver has won at Portland twice before and already has 5 wins in 2026. A fifth IndyCar championship in six years is the explicit goal, and Portland is exactly the kind of circuit where Palou tends to close the deal.
Row two belongs to a pair of Andretti Global teammates. Will Power, who won here last year, qualified third. Marcus Ericsson slotted fourth. Kyffin Simpson, the second-youngest driver in the field, rounds out the Firestone Fast Six in sixth for Chip Ganassi Racing. It is Simpson’s first Fast Six appearance of 2026 and only the second of his career.
The broader Honda story from Saturday goes beyond the front row. The manufacturer transferred 10 cars into the Top 12 round, with all 5 Honda-powered teams represented. Kyle Kirkwood (Andretti Global) was seventh, Graham Rahal (Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing) eighth. Dale Coyne Racing’s Dennis Hauger and Romain Grosjean ran 10th and 11th. Scott Dixon, who clipped the inside barrier at Turn 1 during the Firestone Fast Six and took significant right-front damage, salvaged 12th for Chip Ganassi. Louis Foster went 13th, with Marcus Armstrong 21st and rookie Mick Schumacher 23rd.
There was also a manufacturing milestone buried in the session notes. Rosenqvist’s Indianapolis 500-winning engine crossed 2,000 miles of cumulative use in NTT INDYCAR SERIES competition during this Portland weekend. The series rewards that durability mark with a 50-point bonus in the manufacturers’ championship standings, a meaningful addition for Honda at a stage of the season where points of every denomination carry weight.
Rosenqvist credited the team’s persistence after a weekend that did not start cleanly. “I wouldn’t say we started in a great spot, but they kept pushing all weekend and now we’re on pole,” he said after the session. Palou, for his part, acknowledged the marginal deficit to his front-row partner without much concern: “I can go back and know exactly where in the lap I lost that tiny amount of time. But I’m happy with P2.”
Sunday’s race goes green at 1 p.m. PT on Fox. Palou has enough of a points buffer that a conservative points-scoring run protects his championship standing, which is exactly the kind of calculus that tends to make Portland unpredictable. Rosenqvist has the pole and a fast car. History says that combination does not guarantee much at this circuit.
Source: Honda. Images courtesy of Honda.
