Dale Coyne Racing PR

Grosjean and Ware at IMS: Qualifying

Posted on by Patrick Stephan
Second Row Start for Grosjean at IMS

Indianapolis, IN (August 13, 2021) – Dale Coyne Racing with RWR driver Romain Grosjean once again put in an impressive performance during qualifying on the road course at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway picking up a third place starting position after missing out on pole by less than half of a tenth of a second. His teammate in the #52 Nurtec ODT (Rimegepant) entry, Cody Ware, will be starting 27th for his third NTT INDYCAR SERIES start.

Right from the start of qualifying for his group, Grosjean jumped up to first place on the time sheets and stayed there for most of the first-round session before falling to fifth. He then improved his time to a 1:11.20 on his sixth and final lap of the session, which allowed him to move on to the Firestone Fast 12. 

In the final qualifying round, the Swiss-born Frenchman jumped up to second on his second time around the 14-turn road course. After falling to 10th following his third lap, he jumped to the provisional pole on his penultimate time around and once again improved his time with a lap of 1:10.7418. While his time initially placed him first, he ended up missing out on pole position by 0.0271 seconds.

“Top three qualifying at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. We have a pretty good record at this track with first in May and third today. We’ve done a really good job with the #51 Nurtec ODT Honda from practice to qualifying to improve the car. I think we have a good race car for tomorrow. I’m excited for the race. Hopefully we can go and pick up our first win,” shared Grosjean.

With today’s qualifying result, Grosjean now has seven top seven starts this season. 



Cody Ware went out in the first qualifying group and improved his time with every lap, finally placing himself 27th on the grid for Saturday’s race.

“I think we started the day off pretty good. Obviously having no laps at this track always puts you behind the eight ball a little bit but I feel the team overcame some adversity and we got the car to where I was comfortable,” said Ware. “Going into qualifying I felt pretty good about it even though the time did not reflect how good the car was. I’m really looking forward to an exciting day tomorrow in the 52 Nurtec ODT (Rimegepant) Honda where I feel like we will have a good pace.”

The Big Machine Spiked Coolers Grand Prix at Indianapolis Motor Speedway goes green at 1:00pm ET on Saturday, August 14, 2021 and will broadcast live on NBCSN.