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Opinion
The field of thirty three for the 107th running of the Indianapolis 500 but – as we have become accustomed to – not without some significant drama om Sunday. Read on for all the talking points from go-fast day at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway:
The magic number for the Chip Ganassi Racing driver was 234.217 miles per hour (nearly 379 kilometres per hour) average over the four-lap qualifying run which means the Spaniard is now the fastest pole qualifier in the history of the Indianapolis 500. Only Arie Luyendyk went faster in 1996, but not for pole.
Palou, the 2021 IndyCar Series champion, posted what eventually was the pole-winning speed and had to wait, watch and hope as Rinus VeeKay, Santino Ferrucci and Felix Rosenqvist all went out and had a chance to knock him off the inside front row of the grid, but none were able to.
In retrospect, seeing a Ganassi car take pole isn’t surprising. After all, Chip’s squad has been at or near the top of the time sheets all week.
The team has four cars – Palou, New Zealand’s Scott Dixon, two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Takuma Sato and reigning Indianapolis 500 champion Marcus Ericsson – starting inside the top ten.
The Ganassi squad will be very hard to beat on Sunday. I’m fully expecting a Ganassi car to end up in victory lane, I just can’t split them at the moment. They’re all very capable of winning.
Alex Palou’s ecstasy after his pole run was contrasted by the distraught, disconsolate figure of Graham Rahal, who watched his teammate Jack Harvey, in thirty-fourth and on the outside looking in on the field of thirty-three, go out in the dying seconds of the Last Row Shootout qualifying session and put in one of the all-time great four-lap runs to dispatch his teammate and qualify for the Indianapolis 500.
Thirty years after Bobby Rahal missed out on qualifying for the Indianapolis 500, his son has suffered the same fate. The interview Rahal gave after his teammate bumped him was hard to listen to. In fact, he had to cut it short, such was his despair.
Spare a thought for Jack Harvey: he will of course be thrilled, but will undoubtedly be wishing his involvement in the race didn’t come at the expense of his teammate. Nonetheless, it was one heck of a final run, a banzai moment that reminded me of 2019, when Juncos Racing’s Kyle Kaiser did a similar thing, knocking out Formula One world champion Fernando Alonso.
It has been a disastrous week for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing. Katherine Legge, driving an Indy 500 only entry, was the team’s fastest qualifier and she will start thirtieth. Further back, Christian Lundgaard, fresh off a podium on the road course race last weekend, will roll off from thirty-first, and Harvey, of course, at the tail end of the field, whilst Graham Rahal has missed out. This might be the worst moment in the team’s history – absolute rock-bottom. Rahal’s on-track response to being bumped from the field will be very interesting.
Australia’s Will Power was the fastest Team Penske driver in twelfth. It’s been well-noted that ever since Roger Penske bought the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the IndyCar Series that his team, which has won the Indianapolis 500 eighteen times, has not performed well.
There was hope that this year would be different, but clearly not on pole day. Scott McLaughlin managed fourteenth and Josef Newgarden will roll of seventeenth. Following their progress on race day will be fascinating.
One of the best qualifying stories comes from the team owned by the legendary AJ Foyt. For the first time ever, his drivers have outqualified the Team Penske cars. The offseason addition of engineer Michael Cannon to the Foyt stable has paid dividends.
Santino Ferrucci will start fourth and rookie Benjamin Pedersen eleventh. You absolutely love to see the Foyt squad doing well at a place where Foyt won four times as a driver, adding a victory as a team owner with Swede Kenny Brack back in the old Indy Racing League days.
You have to give props to some of the first-timers qualifying at Indianapolis. Whilst Sting Ray Robb did it the hard way, his Dale Coyne Honda surviving the Last Row Shootout, Augustin Canapino of Juncos Hollinger Racing – a driver, remember, who hadn’t done any oval racing prior to this year – qualified twenty-seventh. That is a mammoth effort.
Also mammoth: Benjamin Pedersen was twelfth in his AJ Foyt Racing machine.
There was drama Saturday at both ends of the field – watching drivers try to get into the Fast 12 to have a shot at pole on Sunday and others trying to make sure they qualified inside the top thirty to avoid being forced to qualify via the Last Row Shootout on Sunday.
A day later, we had even more drama, as the friendly-fire Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing duel to grasp the thirty-third and final spot in the field played out, and then more as the fastest six drivers went after pole.
Honestly, anyone who didn’t find themselves completely enthralled during the closing moments of the Last Row Shootout and again through most of the Fast Six qualifying is very hard to please. There were more twists and turns than in a Hollywood blockbuster.
This was drama like only Indianapolis 500 qualifying can deliver. And the bigger-than-usual attendance for pole day is testament to that.
Some journalists said it was the biggest they’d seen for a decade. Memo, IndyCar: do not change a thing.
The one hundred and seventh edition of the greatest race in the world takes the green flag Sunday (Monday morning AEST) for the two-hundred lap contest.
Stan Sports will have live TV coverage of the race. Australia’s Leigh Diffey will call the action with former drivers Townsend Bell and James Hinchcliffe alongside him in the booth.
The legendary Indianapolis Motor Speedway Radio Network broadcast is available free via the IndyCar website and app. Mark Jaynes is the Voice of the 500 and will lead a team that includes turn announcers Nick Yeoman, Michael Young, Jake Query and Chris Denari, with driver analyst Davey Hamilton and legendary broadcaster Paul Page contributing.
It’s going to be an amazing race. Whilst I think the Ganassi squad are the favourites, anyone in the top ten could conceivably win. Don’t sleep on Will Power from twelfth or his Penske teammate Josef Newgarden from seventeenth. Four-time winner Helio Castroneves starts twentieth and can never be counted out at Indianapolis.
From a purely sentimental standpoint, I’d love to see Tony Kanaan, in his twenty-second and final start at Indianapolis, win again. He’ll start ninth, so it definitely isn’t out of the realms of possibility.
Enjoy the race!
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