In his first weekend with the reigning champion Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac squad, van der Zande was put in the car for qualifying ahead of teammates Jordan Taylor and Ryan Hunter-Reay.

He repaid the team’s confidence by beating the new Acura of Team Penske’s Helio Castroneves to pole by 0.007s.

“I didn’t expect to grab this pole,” he admitted. “I was waiting for them to tell me what [position] I’d done, and they only told me in Turn 5 – I was over the moon, I can tell you.

“I thought it was a nice lap, and in Turn 5 I overshot quite a bit, but the car somehow turned. I floored it, even though the car was not rotated well, and I just managed to stay on track there. Maybe that made a difference, I don’t know!”

“I caught some traffic three laps before the end, in fact I let Helio past on track, and they got on the radio and said ‘stop slowing down, you’ll have two laps if you go now’ – so I started to accelerate again. The first lap was OK, and the second lap was all-in, I outbraked myself where I could and it turned out to be a fast lap!

“It is very tight, so to snatch the pole here was a little luck and, I would say, balls-out! You put everything into it, you get a better feel for where you can brake, so in some places that’s seven, eight or 10 metres later than you’ve done so far.”

On the subject of his big break with a fulltime ride with the WTR team, van der Zande says he’s already learned a lot from spending the month in Florida with them.

“Super thrilled to be here, and getting promoted to the championship-winning team is something special,” he added. “These guys expect a lot from you – two days of driver-change practice until it’s perfect.

“These guys know how to win a championship, it feels incredible to be here.”