The 26-year-old Spaniard will lead the 33-car field to the green flag for a three-wide rolling start across 11 rows for the 200-lap, 500-mile race.
Ed Carpenter Racing’s Rinus VeeKay will start from the middle of the front row, with Arrow McLaren’s Felix Rosenqvist on the outside.
Palou completed his four-lap qualifying run in Sunday evening’s Fast Six qualifying session around the 2.5-mile oval at 2m33.7037s. He was 0.004s fastest than VeeKay, which equates to 0.006mph.
Palou’s opening lap of 235.131mph proved to be crucial, as his following three laps were all marginally slower than VeeKay’s. However, the 0.112mph extra speed he carried on his first lap over VeeKay gave him the crucial advantage, despite Rinus’s faster Turn 1 speed trap of 240.851mph to Palou’s 239.722mph.
Rosenqvist was third fastest at 234.114mph, despite topping the previous Q1 and Q2 sessions. Santino Ferrucci, who ran high at Turn 1 on his opening lap for AJ Foyt Racing, was a disappointed fourth, ahead of Pato O’Ward (McLaren) and Scott Dixon (Ganassi).
Rosenqvist set the Q2 pace on Sunday afternoon at 234.081mph, ahead of Ferrucci, VeeKay and Palou.
Eliminated at this point were Alexander Rossi (McLaren), Takuma Sato (Ganassi), Tony Kanaan (McLaren), Marcus Ericsson (Ganassi), Benjamin Pedersen (Foyt) and Will Power (Penske).
Saturday’s six-hour qualifying session set the grid from P13-P30. Rosenqvist was fastest at 233.947mph ahead of Rossi.
Knocked out at this point were Ed Carpenter (ECR), Scott McLaughlin (Penske), Kyle Kirkwood (Andretti Autosport), Conor Daly (ECR), Josef Newgarden (Penske), Ryan Hunter-Reay (Dreyer and Reinbold), Helio Castroneves (Meyer Shank Racing), Colton Herta (Andretti), Simon Pagenaud (MSR), David Malukas (Dale Coyne Racing), Marco Andretti (Andretti), Stefan Wilson (D&R), Devlin DeFrancesco (Andretti), Juncos Hollinger Racing’s Agustin Canapino and Callum Ilott, RC Enerson (Abel Motorsports) and Katherine Legge (Rahal Letterman Lanigan).
The slowest four cars were consigned to the Last-Chance qualifying session.
Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Christian Lundgaard was fastest at 229.649mph, ahead of Dale Coyne Racing’s rookie Sting Ray Robb and Jack Harvey (RLLR).
Harvey bumped team-mate Graham Rahal from the starting field on his very last run of the hour-long session.