Pole champ from last year laments he probably won’t be running next week.

James Hinchcliffe watched the final day of Indianapolis 500 qualifying in street clothes.

He could be suiting up in one of those cars next Sunday. Perhaps Pippa Mann will join him.

As Schmidt Peterson Motorsports continued searching for a way to get Hinchcliffe into the race, the popular Canadian driver refused to lobby for a ride and acknowledged that he didn’t expect to start in the 33-car field.

“At this point, I believe I won’t,” he said. “I know there’s precedent for doing that, but at the end of the day, every single driver in this race earned their way in and it’s hard to knock someone out of that.”

The clearest path to make it in would be replacing teammate and Indy-only driver Jay Howard.

Hinchcliffe, SPM’s top driver, is fifth in the season standings and gaining no points in a double-points race would likely knock Hinchcliffe out of contention. Plus, his primary sponsor, Arrow Electronics, has its name on a massive temporary suite complex in the speedway’s first turn.

There was no immediate indication a move would take place, though.

One reason for the holdup: Rules prevent teams from making driver changes until qualifying ends be- cause the penalty for such a decision would be to start from the back of the field.

Another possibility to get the two eliminated drivers, Hinchcliffe and Mann, on the starting grid vanished when Jay Frye, IndyCar’s president of competition and operations, told The Associated Press the field would not be expanded.

It was common practice for decades for more than 33 drivers to show up at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, with many top names failing to make the race.

But “bumping” had faded away in a down economy and more than 33 drivers showed up at Indy this year for the first time in three seasons. It meant two would not make “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing” — but no one thought it would be Hinchcliffe or Mann, who is seeking to make her sixth Indy 500.

There’s another avenue, too — cutting a deal for a qualified car. That’s what Andretti Autosport did in 2011 to get Ryan HunterReay back in the race.

Hinchcliffe is the face of a national Honda campaign that’s been running all season and likely spent significant money on advertising time on ABC’s broadcast next week. Not having him in the race would be a blow to Honda, his championship hopes, and his sponsor.

The 2016 Indy pole winner acknowledged that being left out hurts — but it could be worse.

“I might not be in the 33, but I also wasn’t sitting in a hospital with tubes coming out of me and 10 doctors around,” Hinchcliffe said, referring to the life-threatening injury he suffered in a 2015 crash at Indy.

Hinchcliffe