Fast Nine Bracing for Wild Dash to Pole Sunday at Indy
May 19, 2019 | By Phillip B. Wilson, Indianapolis Motor Speedway
Ed Carpenter sounded amused by the light-hearted suggestion that there could be team orders when three of his cars, including his own, compete Sunday for the pole in the 103rd Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge.
“If there were team orders, I would have been first today,” Carpenter said after coming in seventh for the Fast Nine Shootout.
What stands out about the fastest nine qualifiers is that six are Chevrolet-powered entries driven by drivers for Ed Carpenter Racing and Team Penske. ECR’s Spencer Pigot was quickest Saturday and wouldn’t mind keeping that No. 1 spot if it rains on Sunday.
That’s because the competition for this pole should be fierce. In addition to having to contend with his boss in Carpenter as well as teammate Ed Jones, there’s the Team Penske trio of NTT IndyCar Series champions in Will Power, who is also the defending race winner, as well as Simon Pagenaud and Josef Newgarden.
There’s also the series’ hottest young rookie in 19-year-old Colton Herta, who wasn’t content with sitting eighth on the grid. So he bumped up to fifth with another run in his No. 88 Harding Steinbrenner Racing Honda. Herta became the series’ youngest winner at 18 when he triumphed in this season’s second race, in March at the Circuit of The Americas.
Rounding out the nine are Honda-powered cars driven by 2018 points runner-up Alexander Rossi of Andretti Autosport and four-time Indy car champion Sebastien Bourdais of Dale Coyne Racing with Vasser-Sullivan.
That’s a lot to contend with if you’re Pigot, who in just his second full-time season has never won a series pole. His best qualifying effort has been sixth, duplicated earlier this season for the Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama this April.
“Obviously if I had to pick one way or the other, it would be nice to just kind of relax and not have to go again and be on pole,” Pigot said, “but if we get to go again, I've got all the confidence in the world that we're going to be able to challenge for the pole.”
It’s the second consecutive May that all three Carpenter cars made it into the Fast Nine. It’s also worth noting that the only driver in this field who has won this pole is Carpenter, who did it for a third time last year.
But unlike then, he appears to be slower than the other two ECR cars. Jones posted the best no-tow practice lap during the week and seemed on the verge of becoming the fastest qualifier this day before a last-lap issue dropped him back to sixth.
“I know Spencer is hoping it rains,” Carpenter said. “I think the rest of us are hoping it doesn't rain so we can try to beat him. No, there are no team orders.”
The same could be said for Power, Pagenaud and Newgarden. Power just missed pushing Pigot to second by 11 10-thousands of a second. Pagenaud, the 2016 series champion, was third. Newgarden, the 2017 series champion, was fourth.
As Hall of Fame owner Roger Penske reminded Friday, he’s celebrated the same record number of Indianapolis 500 poles (17) as victories in “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.” A year after becoming the 12th different Penske driver to win the “500,” Power would love to claim Indy as his 57th career pole.
“I feel like there’s about five guys that actually have the car to do it,” Power said.
Presuming he’s counting himself, his teammates and Pigot, that would mean one other car.
“I hope I do it one time,” Power said. “That would be cool.”
Bourdais thought he had positioned himself to qualify as high as sixth but blamed himself for making a handling mistake at the beginning of his third lap that forced him to lift off the accelerator in both Turns 1 and 2, subsequently losing about five-tenths of a second.
“I screwed up,” Bourdais said. “I really didn’t think that was going to stick (in the Fast Nine).”
That he did stick made it easier to accept the consequences. What kind of shot does he have on Sunday?
“Anybody can make a mistake,” Bourdais said.
Rossi, who won the 2016 Indy 500 as a rookie, sounded somewhat resigned to his fate of not being able to contend with the fastest qualifiers this day.
“Ultimately it didn’t matter,” he said, “because I don’t think we were going to have anything for the top six, anyways.”
That said, Rossi is glad he won’t need to maneuver his car through almost the entire field as was the case last year, when he started 32nd and finished fourth.
“I’m very grateful to be in a comfortable position and have the privilege of going for a Fast Nine and not have to deal with a positive kind of stress, if that makes sense,” Rossi said, “of trying to have a good starting position versus the stress of getting in the show.”