Rosenqvist was 11th driver of the 27 in the XPEL 375 to complete a two-lap qualifying run, and his average of 221.110mph in the Arrow McLaren SP-Chevrolet around the 1.5-mile Texas Motor Speedway was enough to withstand strong assaults from two Penske-Chevrolets, Takuma Sato’s Dale Coyne Racing with RWR-Honda and his former teammate Scott Dixon of Chip Ganassi Racing-Honda.
The Swede, who won Rookie of the Year title in 2019 – and took pole on the Indy road course – and scored his first win at Road America in 2020 – endured a torrid first season at AMSP, missing two races due to an accident at Detroit and taking until the latter third of the season to find setups that allowed him to start matching the pace of teammate Pato O’Ward.
Today, the 30-year-old Swede declared: “For the whole Arrow McLaren SP team and the #7 car in general, it couldn't have been better timing to get this pole. It's a good boost mentally for all the guys and girls working on the car, and I think everyone just showed today that we refocused and came back.
“A little bit of a disappointment in St. Pete and, obviously, last year, but coming back here just fully focused and doing our own thing and putting the car on pole is really amazing…
“When you don't have a good result, there's always excuses and reasons and things, but if you don't have the result, then at the end of the day it's going to eat away at your confidence, right? I feel like I've done a good job recharging every weekend, and I've gone into every weekend positively, but you don't actually have the confidence that you can do it, in a way, because the last time I had a good result was really a long time ago.
“Things like this is really important where you just kind of break the trend and like, ‘Hey, you can do this, we can do this. Our car is strong. We do a good job. We don't need to focus too much on the others, and just do our thing.’
He said that putting previous disappointments behind him had been vital to boosting his confidence.
“You sometimes have to forget what happened and just kind of have fun with it,” he said. “Don't overthink things. There are so many details you need to do right, but if you start thinking too much, you're never going to get better, so at some point you just have to let go of the demons and just jump in the car and have fun, and I think that was a good example today.”
Rosenqvist was running second and closing on teammate Dixon in the 2020 Texas race when he crashed, and last year there were pitlane issues in the double-header that cost him at least one podium. Now, Rosenqvist says that TMS “is a track where I feel very confident, and last year we had two really good races here. We just didn't get a good finish for other reasons.”
However, he went on to admit that such a positive outlook on the venue was a complete reversal of how he felt when first tackling ovals.
“I remember the first time I came here,” he said. “Then it was definitely not fun. I was really scared the first time I was here, and it was actually the first superspeedway I ever did. But I think from 2020 onwards it's been a track where I feel really calm and confident, and I kind of know how to attack the race and how to work with the driving line and how the car needs to be set up. I think it suits me pretty well, naturally, and definitely I feel like I have some unfinished business at Texas.”
Key to being a successful oval driver, he said, was following his instincts.
“On these kind of tracks you're always your own worst enemy, right? You're always debating with yourself – Should I trim out? Should I change my tools? Should I go freer? Should I go tighter? It's always a constant mental thing, and I think it showed that just attacking it a bit more calmly has been good for me. Not overthinking it.
“Kind of same at Indy [where I’m] also getting better and better every year. I mean, you can really get deep inside your head on these places… You just have to trust yourself, switch off and do it.”
