LONG POND, Pennsylvania — As he stood on pit road at Pocono Raceway, watching fellow competitors qualify for the ABC Supply 500, Zach Veach wasn’t really fixated on the pole position that he held through much of Saturday’s Verizon P1 Award session.
The 23-year-old Andretti Autosport rookie was more mindful of the big picture in his first full-time Verizon IndyCar Series season.
Pole would have been nice had the two-lap run in the No. 26 Group One Thousand One Honda held up. It didn’t. He slid to seventh – which ties his best qualifying effort – out of 22 cars.
But even before the usual suspects edged past, Veach spoke of his desire for strong race results in these final four starts to the season, beginning with Sunday’s 500-mile race.
“I want something to take home,” he said. “Sure, if you get the pole, you get the nice crystal trophy, too, but it would be nice to have a podium. Since (driving in) Indy Lights, this is the longest streak I’ve had without a top-three finish.”
“I just want to prove I belong here, not so much to other people, but to myself. I want to be able to run up front with these guys consistently, and I think we’re getting closer to doing that.”
He’s signed to a three-year contract, about which Veach says, “I’d like to think I don’t have that,” because he understands much is expected when driving for successful team owner Michael Andretti.
“I’m more about how we end up the last four races,” Veach said. “We’ve been in the top 10 two races in a row, so I’d like to keep that streak going to (the season finale at) Sonoma.”
He’s coming off finishes of seventh in the Honda Indy Toronto on July 15 and 10th in the Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio on July 29. His best result so far came three races into the season with a fourth in the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach.
Veach’s two-lap qualifying run on Saturday was an impressive 217.587 mph, a couple hours after he led morning practice at 217.393. Team Penske’s Will Power eventually won the pole with a speed of 219.511 mph.
“We’ve just got to keep improving,” Veach said.
Seventeenth in the point standings, will start just behind another rookie who tested last week at this track. Robert Wickens, who qualified sixth in the No. 6 Lucas Oil Schmidt Peterson Motorsports Honda, has been delivering the kind of consistent results that Veach is striving for. Wickens has four consecutive top-five finishes, including second at Mid-Ohio and third at Toronto. Wickens, an older rookie with a lengthier racing resume at 29, is sixth in the points.
The two other rookies in the field will start farther back. Pietro Fittipaldi qualified 17th in the No. 19 Paysafe Dale Coyne Racing Honda. Matheus “Matt” Leist will roll off 20th in the No. 4 ABC Supply AJ Foyt Racing Chevrolet.
Veach does have previous racing experience at Pocono, where he raced twice while in Indy Lights presented by Cooper Tires, finishing second in 2014 and fourth in 2015. Combined with last week’s Indy car test, it gave him a little more to go on in attacking “The Tricky Triangle,” a 2.5-mile oval with corner banking varying in degrees from 14 in Turn 1 to 6 in Turn 3.
“If you want to be above some of these guys, you’ve got to go outside your comfort zone and change things,” Veach said of making on-board changes during his qualifying run. “It matters that much for the balance in (Turn) 1 versus 3, that you have to be changing the weight jacker and the tools.
“I think we got it close. I’d say my run was 80 percent of what I wanted it to be.”
The ABC Supply 500 airs live at 1:30 p.m. ET Sunday on NBCSN and the Advance Auto Parts INDYCAR Radio Network.