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Photo: Matt Fraver

Andretti Global’s Louis Foster edged out HMD Motorsports’ Caio Collet to take pole position for the Indy Nxt race in Portland.

The championship leader was just 0.1526 seconds faster than Collet, enough to secure his fifth pole of the season.

Collet set the pace in the first qualifying group, immediately moving to the top of the times, closely followed by Abel Motorsports’ Yuven Sundaramoorthy. He gradually lowered the benchmark pace to 1’02.2922′, a time that put him comfortably at the top of his group. Andretti’s James Roe Jr., who finished second in the session, was almost half a second slower than Collet.

Foster was in the second group with the fastest time at the start, but only managed to beat Collet’s provisional pole lap in his final laps. His closest competitor in the group was his title rival Jacob Abel, who was three-tenths of a second slower than him on a lap that takes just over a minute.

Both groups’ sessions ran under green lights throughout, although Juncos Hollinger Racing’s Ricardo Escotto was shown a local yellow flag after spinning. HMD’s Myles Rowe also had problems after going off track between turns 11 and 12, but was able to continue without causing a stoppage.

His teammate Reece Gold was the third fastest in the second group and will therefore start the race in fifth place, ahead of Sundaramoorthy, Bryce Aron of Andretti and Christian Brooks of HMD.

Salvador de Alba of Andretti Cape and Jonathan Browne of HMD complete the top 10 on the starting grid.

Qualification results