The time sheets don’t lie: Jacob Abel is the favorite to win the pole Saturday afternoon for the INDY NXT by Firestone Grand Prix of Alabama at Barber Motorsports Park.

Series veteran Abel has led both practice sessions for this event, including Saturday morning with a time of 1 minute, 11.1084 seconds in the No. 51 Abel Construction entry fielded by Abel Motorsports. That’s a big jump from his session-leading lap Friday of 1:11.9990.

SEE: Practice Results

But the margin of Abel’s superiority in both sessions makes him the leading candidate to grab the top starting spot when qualifying starts at 2:35 p.m. ET today (INDYCAR LIVE, INDYCAR Radio Network) on the 17-turn, 2.3-mile natural road course.

Abel ended up more than one-half second quicker than his closest pursuer, James Roe of Andretti Global, in Friday’s practice. Saturday session runner-up Nolan Siegel trimmed Abel’s edge to .2995 of a second with his top lap of 1:11.4079 in the No. 39 HMD Motorsports car, but that’s still a big gap in the ultra-competitive INDYCAR development series.

Jamie Chadwick ended up third Saturday at 1:11.6052 in the No. 28 VEXT entry fielded by Andretti Global, followed by Reece Gold at 1:11.7053 in the No. 10 HMD Motorsports car.

Roe rounded out the top five at 1:11.7089 in the No. 29 TopCon car. The top six drivers in the session were quicker than Abel’s best lap from Friday, as Caio Collet was the quickest rookie in the field and sixth overall at 1:11.7215 in the No. 18 HMD Motorsports car.

Championship contender Louis Foster continued to suffer from mechanical problems that also limited his running Friday. Foster stopped on course in Turn 10 one minute into the session Saturday in his No. 26 Copart/Novara Technologies entry of Andretti Global driven by series veteran Louis Foster, the second time this weekend his car has stopped on track.

The 35-lap race starts at 11:05 a.m. ET Sunday, with live coverage on Peacock and the INDYCAR Radio Network.