Indy Qualifying

Indy 500 qualifying has a different format this year, which made yesterday’s qualifying session interesting.

This year, a maximum of 11 cars can qualify on each of the first three days of qualifying, and bumping can occur on each day.

Also, each car now can have three qualifying attempts per day and bumped cars can attempt to requalify. Previously, cars only got three attempts total, and if a car got bumped, it was out of the race.

Since Pole Day was rained out, 22 cars could qualify yesterday. Tony Kanaan went out early and grabbed the pole. He then hung out the rest of the day to see if anyone knocked him off. If someone had gone faster, he was going to pull his car and attempt to regain the pole, but nobody ever did.

Some of the fastest qualifying laps were turned in by rookie Danica Patrick, but she wobbled into turn 1 of her first qualifying lap, so she ended up on the inside of row 2 (4th overall).

Taking advantage of the new rules, a few drivers pulled their cars and attempted to requalify. Dario Franchitti waved off his first attempt before qualifying seventh on his second try. He felt that wasn’t good enough, so he pulled that one and tried again. The risk was that if anything went wrong (crash, mechanical problem, etc) and he didn’t post a time, he would have to wait for day 3 and could not qualify better than 23rd. That didn’t happen though, and he improved one spot to sixth.

Sam Hornish Jr. didn’t like his initial qualifying attempt, which put him 11th, so he tried again and blazed into second.

Scott Sharp joins Kanaan and Hornish on the front row.

Not everyone was better the second time out. Late in the day, Helio Castroneves pulled his car from the 4th spot to make a run at the pole, but he came in a little worse, and will now start 5th.

There was also some bumping yesterday. Alex Barron was bumped from the field, but then went out later and requalified the same car. In doing so, he bumped his teammate Patrick Carpentier, who will have to wait until next week to try again.

I like the new format. It adds excitement to the Pole qualifying because you have drivers risking good positions in the grid to take a shot at the top. Bumping is always good too, but I wonder in a typical year if there would be much excitement on the day that drivers are trying to fill the #12-22 spots. Because of the rain, we’ll have to wait until next year at least to find out.

The last 11 spots will be filled next Saturday, and once that happens, bumping begins.