IndyCar Monterey Grand Prix Starting Lineup: Full Grid at Laguna Seca

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Here’s the full IndyCar starting lineup for the Monterey Grand Prix at Laguna Seca, with the complete grid for Sunday’s race.

Scott McLaughlin takes the pole for Sunday’s IndyCar season finale at Laguna Seca, denying newly crowned champion Alex Palou by 0.018 seconds.

Palou already owns his fifth title, which leaves the Mission Foods Grand Prix of Monterey to settle second place, Rookie of the Year and millions in Leaders Circle money.

McLaughlin’s lap of 1:09.136 in the No. 3 Team Penske Chevrolet held off Palou’s 1:09.154 in the Firestone Fast Six, as reported by Frontstretch‘s Tom Blackburn. Indianapolis 500 winner Felix Rosenqvist qualified third in his last start for Meyer Shank Racing. Alexander Rossi lines up fourth in the No. 20 Ed Carpenter Racing Chevrolet, his best road-course start of the season.

Grid penalties reshuffled the rest. Christian Lundgaard was fifth quickest in his final run for Arrow McLaren but drops to 11th on a six-spot sanction for an engine change. Caio Collet, fastest of the rookies, carries the same penalty.

Pato O’Ward never escaped the opening qualifying group and starts 13th, seven days after sweeping the Milwaukee doubleheader. Scott Dixon, making his last start as a Chip Ganassi Racing driver before joining Arrow McLaren, rolls off 17th.

FOX carries the race, with coverage beginning at 2:30 p.m. ET / 11:30 a.m. PT and Will Buxton calling the action alongside analysts Townsend Bell and James Hinchcliffe, listed on the FOX Sports viewing guide. FOX Deportes has the Spanish-language broadcast. Drivers are scheduled to start engines at 11:58 a.m. PT with the green flag at 12:05 p.m. PT, according to the track’s public event schedule.

Streaming runs through FOX One, which is offering a three-day free trial, plus FOXSports.com and the FOX Sports app. YouTube TV, Fubo, Hulu + Live TV and DIRECTV STREAM all carry FOX.

Radio coverage runs 2:30 to 5:30 p.m. ET on INDYCAR Radio powered by OnlyBulls and SiriusXM, on the INDYCAR Radio broadcast schedule. Mark Jaynes anchors with analyst Davey Hamilton.

Here is the full grid for Sunday’s start at Laguna Seca…

Scott McLaughlin Tops a Shortened Laguna Seca Practice

Saturday came undone before an Indy car turned a lap. Officials pushed back and then trimmed Practice 2 while crews rebuilt catch fencing and barriers at the crest of the Zanardi Corkscrew, wrecked when a car in Race 1 of the Porsche Sprint Challenge USA West went through the fence. The driver was hospitalized but appeared mostly unhurt.

The session finally went green around 11:10 a.m. PT and ran roughly 25 minutes.

McLaughlin made it count, topping the abbreviated run at 1:10.3014 ahead of Rosenqvist and Palou, according to the FOX Sports practice recap. The New Zealander has not visited victory lane since August 2024 at Milwaukee.

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Alex Palou Leads the Monterey Field

Sunday’s race covers 95 laps of the 2.238-mile, 11-turn road course, and Palou arrives with a record that borders on absurd: five starts here, three wins, nothing worse than third. The track renamed its signature corner for the late Alex Zanardi on Friday, and Palou’s No. 10 Honda wears a lightning-bolt livery in tribute, detailed by Frontstretch‘s Wyatt Watson.

The live fight sits behind him. Lundgaard holds 507 points, Kyle Kirkwood 505 and O’Ward 503, and Kirkwood is the only one of the three starting inside the top 10 after the penalties landed. Dixon’s exit closes a tenure that produced six championships, announced in an INDYCAR news release.

Passing at Laguna Seca is a chore, and the pole sitter has won four of the six races run here since 2019. McLaughlin has one afternoon to make that history hold up.

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