The Swedish driver began his new adventure with Meyer Shank Racing in one of the best possible ways by securing an impressive front row start, only 0.0058s away from the best lap of the first qualifying session of the year put in by Josef Newgarden.
Rosenqvist impressed even before the first race with his P2, the best ever starting position for his new team, and held the track record at St. Petersburg for a few minutes, as he led Round Two of Qualifying with a 59.2706s, a new track record.
The former Arrow McLaren driver discussed his and his team’s performance in the post qualifying press conference, expressing the relief felt after the first practise session of the year which had seen him sign the fastest lap:
“Yeah, I think it’s a big boost for the whole team. I think when we came here this week and I could tell that people were hesitant to believe that we were as quick as we were in testing, but after P1 everyone is like a big relief. We’re in it. We’re good.”
Asked if MSR had decided to focus on improving their qualifying pace, the driver of car no. 60 denied, mentioning that it has been the other way round so far. The Swede was regularly quick over a lap at his previous team but struggled to match that pace in race stints.
“Actually, honestly Mike and I have been talking, and we’ve been talking mostly about race craft because I think that’s probably more a personal thing with me. I’ve been generally strong in qualifying, but race craft is something that I want to improve.
“We’ve been focusing more on that. We thought that if we put everything together, we should be good in qualifying, especially here. It’s a package that we know pretty well. I’m normally pretty good here,” he added.
Twice on the podium in the past season at Detroit and Portland, Rosenqvist is looking forward to the opportunity of returning in the top three, having reached his goal for the time being:
“A little bit. My target was to get into the Fast Six. I definitely thought we could do that. To be so close to pole is both cool and frustrating.”
However, to be only fractions of seconds slower than the actual pole position can definitely turn out to be slightly upsetting for a driver:
“Congrats to Josef. I put everything on there, and I honestly can’t remember if I didn’t do many mistakes, so it was definitely down to the… I’ll give this one to Josef,” he concluded.
