Indianapolis Qualifying: Fast Friday thoughts

Gor-geous!  That’s the only way to describe today at the World’s Greatest Race Course as 39 drivers turned a total of 2,254 laps, topped by Team Penske’s Helio Castroneves with a lap of 228.611 mph.  Turning the fast lap of the month puts Castroneves in prime position to secure his fifth career pole at Indianapolis in 11 attempts and move him into second place on his own on the list of all-time pole positions at the Indianapolis 500.  Should he win the pole tomorrow, he would trail only former Team Penske superstar Rick Mears, who had six poles between 1978 and 1992.

Though speeds were up dramatically today, it was a busy track all day and truly understanding what speeds we should expect tomorrow is largely anyone’s guess.  Going into Happy Hour, Race Control confirmed that the fastest cars on the “no-tow” list were Dan Wheldon and Bertrand Baguette.  I did not see Castroneves’s fast lap in Happy Hour, but his Verizon Team Penske teammate, Will Power, was running laps consistently above 227 mph all alone on the track.

Early in the day, HVM Racing announced that driver Simona de Silvestro has not been cleared to drive due to the burns on her hands from Thursday scary incident.  Team personnel are continuing to prepare the backup car and are hopefully that Simona will be able to drive it.  If she is not cleared to drive tomorrow, then the team will have to investigate the possibility of putting another driver in the car to qualify.  Should that be the case, the car would move to the end of the line, but at least Simona would be in the field.

Another team facing a possible driver switch today is Dragon Racing.  Though details are still sketchy and unconfirmed, reports throughout the paddock indicate that rookie Scott Speed has apparently quit the team and has left the premises.  Though Speed refused to confirm the rumor on Twitter, team officials are also declining to confirm that he is still the driver of the #20 Fuzzy’s Vodka car.  Rumors are that Speed became spooked in the car on Thursday and was still not comfortable in it today, complaining vehemently that the car was too loose to drive safely.  The latest reports indicate, however, that Speed will indeed be back in the car tomorrow, though sources are reporting that even Speed’s crew believed he had vacated the seat and were already debating his replacement.  Of course, Scott will still need to find more speed (there just is no way to avoid that pun) to put the car in the field as he is currently well down the speed chart.

Another situation to watch tomorrow will be how the five-car effort of Andretti Autosport performs and whether they can find the speed to put their cars in the top 24.  All five of the cars have been struggling, and only Marco Andretti was quick enough today to make the top 24.  I will not be shocked if at least one of the AA cars misses the field of 33.

Off the track, the beautiful weather brought out a fantastic crowd for a practice day.  I’m certainly no expert, but I would believe an estimate of around 15-20,000 people in attendance today. The Tower Terrace seating from the south end of the Terrace Suite almost all the way down to turn 1 were fairly filled, and a number of fans also watched action from the Northwest Vista in turn 4 and from outside the track at the start/finish line.  I chatted briefly with INDYCAR CEO Randy Bernard who was very pleased with the crowd and said that IMS officials were also quite pleased with the turnout.  If weather like this returns tomorrow, I would expect the best Pole Day attendance in several years.  And yes, I do realize that they used to have 200,000 people on Pole Day.  I was there when they did.  They won’t have that many tomorrow (or likely ever again), but given the world we live in today, I think a crowd of 50,000 would have to be seen as a fantastic turnout.

Among those turning out today to take in the beautiful weather and great on-track action were a large number of children taking advantage of the lowered garage age.  I saw many children throughout the garage area who were being introduced to this great event (though I sadly did not get to cross paths with our younger blogger here at More Front Wing, Hannah).  I just can’t help but think this new program is going to open up INDYCAR to a new generation of children and create a passionate fan base that will continue to follow the sport for years to come.  If there was a downside to the intense action on track, it was that I didn’t see many drivers who were available to fans throughout Gasoline Alley.  I hope that some drivers did make time to meet their visitors, sign some autographs, and have a picture taken because those are the experiences that makes visitors into fans.

On a personal note, I have to send a huge thank you to Brie Rentz from Dreyer & Reinbold Racing who was kind enough to host me in the DRR Hospitality Suite for a bit this afternoon.  Brie has been a great friend to MFW for several years, and the opportunity to experience this part of IMS was certainly greatly appreciated.  Though I wish I could have had more time on the iRacing simulator, I thought my 219.5 laps were fairly respectable given it was the first time I’ve run on a simulator since the days of Indy 500: The Simulation for the IBM 386 DX.

The most recent forecast for tomorrow indicated a 30% chance of isolated thunderstorms throughout the day.  That’s good enough for me to consider it likely we’ll see a full day of qualifying action.  Remember that pit selection for the race will be based on round 1 of qualifying tomorrow, i.e. will not be affected by what happens in the Fast 9.  With that in mind, I won’t be surprised to see teams qualifying times that may already be good enough for a position in the Fast 9 to secure a high pit lane selection.

Also keep in mind that there will be several interesting qualifying battles to watch tomorrow.  Besides the Fast 9 Shootout and run for the pole, drivers will be frantically striving to lock themselves in as first-day qualifiers.  However, teams will also need to keep an eye on other speeds and try to predict what the bubble speed will be on Sunday afternoon.  Being a first-day qualifier will not make a driver immune from the bubble on Sunday, so accepting a slow time just to make the field on Saturday may backfire when the pressure gets cranked up Sunday.

Based on what I saw this afternoon, I am not completely convinced that the Target Chip Ganassi cars of Scott Dixon and Dario Franchitti have the outright speed to compete for the pole position tomorrow.  Both cars struggled through the heat of the day to break the 226 mph barrier and only did so late in Happy Hour when the track was filled with cars and clean laps were nearly impossible to come by.  I expect speeds to be similar to what we saw last year so long as conditions are similar to what we saw today.

My prediction for the pole?  Will Power with a four-lap average of 228.7 mph.  Book it!

Continue to keep an eye on More Front Wing throughout the weekend as I provide trackside reports both here and on Twitter (@MoreFrontWing).