Carpenter fastest during crash-marred qualifying
INDIANAPOLIS — Ed Carpenter turned a tough draw into a winning hand Saturday.
Now he has to do it all over again.
The only full-time owner-driver in the IndyCar Series took advantage of a cooling early evening track for a four-lap average of 230.468 mph on the first day of Indianapolis 500 qualifying. Takuma Sato was second at 230.382, and Scott Dixon, the 2008 Indy winner, third at 230.333.
Two-time Formula One champion Fernando Alonso finished seventh at 230.034.
All of the times will be erased for Sunday’s ninecar pole shootout when Carpenter chases his third pole in five years on his home track.
“I thanked my 7-year-old son for drawing last night,” he explained at the end of a long and frightening day. “I told him, ‘Let’s get five’ and then someone else got five. So I said, ‘Let’s try for six’ and he got 60. I told him ‘Well, you got one of the numbers right,’ trying to stay positive. So he was the first one I thanked when I got out of the car.”
Carpenter’s initial misfortune wound up being a stroke of good luck on a day when nothing came easy.
When drivers arrived at the 2½-mile oval, they had to contend with the chilliest temperatures of the week.
Then came a rain delay that pushed the start of qualifying from late morning to the hottest part of the afternoon and forced the first drivers in qualifying line to make their only allowed attempt on a hot surface that lacked the grip needed to contend for the pole speeds.
That was followed by Sebastien Bourdais’ astonishingly hard, head-on crash. The French driver had just completed his second consecutive lap over 231 mph when his car wiggled going through the second turn, slid up the track and slammed into the wall. It flipped before coming to a stop in the back straightaway.
Doctors at Indiana University Methodist Hospital said the 38-year-old driver has multiple fractures in his pelvis and a fractured right hip. Safety workers arrived on the scene in about 10 seconds but needed about 10 minutes to get Bourdais out of the car and onto a backboard.
Even the 36-year-old Carpenter, the stepson of Tony George, whose family owns the track, was stunned.
“It takes your breath away,” he said. “That was one of the biggest qualifying crashes I’ve seen around here. Hopefully, he’s OK.”
Seventy minutes later, Carpenter cast aside any lingering doubts, hopped in the No. 20 car and bumped Sato from No. 1 to No. 2 with another late-day daring run.
Four drivers later, JR Hildebrand, Carpenter’s teammate, knocked Bourdais’ teammate out of the shootout with his own strong run. Hildebrand wound up fourth at 230.205.
“We’re always surprised by the Carpenter cars,” Dixon said. “They run a different configuration and it’s quite interesting to watch. It’s fantastic around this place.”
Power was the only Penske driver to make the shootout after the IndyCar Grand Prix winner finished sixth at 230.072.