By Christian Koelle, Staff Writer
NASHVILLE – Colton Herta has been, by far, the fastest driver in downtown Nashville.
Herta swept both practices and earned the NTT P1 Award Saturday with a super-fast lap in the Firestone Fast Six. He turned a 1:13.6835-minute lap around the temporary street course around Nissan Stadium. He was also the only driver, in the Fast Six, to crack the 102-mph speed barrier.
Scott Dixon, who spun and hit the wall in the Saturday morning practice session, qualified in the second position. He was 0.5492-seconds away from his 27th career-pole award.
Alex Palou, Alexander Rossi, Felix Rosenqvist, and Romain Grosjean rounded out the top-six in qualifying.
The session had a couple of accidents. The first was when IndyCar rookie Jimmie Johnson made hard contact with the outside wall.
REPLAY: Incident involving @JimmieJohnson who has been checked and cleared at @MusicCityGP.
WATCH LIVE:
📲: INDYCAR APP powered by NTT DATA – https://t.co/vyuISIgHnX
🦚: @PeacockTV – https://t.co/mMFAPfFxrz#INDYCAR // #MusicCityGP pic.twitter.com/ky2UjZikv5— NTT INDYCAR SERIES (@IndyCar) August 7, 2021
The second incident of the qualifying sessions was with Hendersonville, Tennessee native Josef Newgarden. Newgarden was pushing it too hard and just missed the corner making hard contact with the outside wall.
The NASCAR broadcast decided to show a little bit of the IndyCar qualifying.
Then this happened to Josef Newgarden. pic.twitter.com/u8mqJbSZg7
— INDYCAR on NBC (@IndyCaronNBC) August 7, 2021
The Big Machine Music City Grand Prix on the Streets of Nashville goes live on NBCSN at 5:30 p.m. ET on Sunday.
Photo: Christian Koelle, Staff Photographer