INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — Day one of qualifying for the 100th running of the Indianapolis 500 started off soggy. All day, drivers complained of hard-to-drive cars, with some of them finally finding additional speed in the extra hour added to today’s qualifying. Wind and varying track temperatures were among the factors given blame by frustrated drivers from big teams to small.
The Fast Nine Shootout cars are set for tomorrow. James Hinchcliffe led the group posting a speed of 230.946 mph. Joining him in The Fast Nine are Ryan Hunter-Reay, Will Power, Townsend Bell, Helio Castroneves, Josef Newgarden, Mikhail Aleshin, Carlos Muñoz, and Simon Pagenaud. Track conditions were best during the last hour of qualifying, from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m., which allowed some drivers to bump their way into The Fast Nine.
They’ll now compete shoot-out style amongst themselves Sunday. The rest of the field (positions 10 through 33) will also compete again Sunday for their qualifying spot, now locked out of starting any better than Row 4. In the end, 5 Hondas and 4 Chevys made up The Fast Nine — whose cars are now locked-in to starting the race in the first 3 rows. Townsend Bell, who also works as an IndyCar TV commentator the rest of the season, said, “I think what we saw today was a really balanced field.”
Practice finally began at 12:37 p.m. The field of 33 was broken into 2 groups, each of which was scheduled for 20 minutes of green-flag practice. However, a few minutes into Group 1’s practice session, Chip Ganassi Racing’s Rookie Max Chilton lost control of the back of his car turning into Turn 2, and spun his car. Unfortunately for the rookie, his spin was stopped when his left front tire came into contact with the Safer barrier wall. It took the Halmotro Safety Team a few minutes to get Chilton out of his car, but he did walk away.
Group 1 had 8 minutes of practice time left once the track was cleaned from Chilton’s crash. Group 2 was then shortened to 15 minutes of practice time.
Practice came to an end just before 1:20 p.m. The cars then headed back to the garage area to undergo technical inspection before being rolled back to the track for qualifying — which began at 2:20 p.m. Qualifying was scheduled to end at 6 p.m. at the start of the day, but that was bumped to 7 p.m. due to the rain delay.
Rookie Alexander Rossi had the fastest practice lap, at 231.249 mph (Honda), followed by Ryan Hunter-Reay, at 231.107 mph (Honda), and Tony Kanaan posted a speed of 230.360 mph (Chevy). Overall, only 21 cars took part in the practice.
32 cars attempted to qualify, with the one omission being rookie Max Chilton — due to his practice crash. However, only 30 cars qualified. Pippa Mann’s crash during her attempt left her with no time. And Gabby Chaves withdrew his initial qualifying time, to try again — then failed to complete his second run.