Carpenter builds speed toward another pole
INDIANAPOLIS — Call it preparation meets opportunity, or call it riding a wave. Whatever the perspective, Ed Carpenter has to be considered the favorite today for his second straight pole position for the Indianapolis 500.
During the first day of qualifying yesterday, bigger and traditionally tough IndyCar teams Andretti Autosport and Team Penske had to take a chance with multiple runs to make sure they would finish in the top nine and make today’s run for the pole. Carpenter, the only ownerdriver in the field, simply ran twice.
“I was hoping to only have to do that once today,” Carpenter said. “As it turned out, I had to do it twice to have some security.”
Today, the top nine will have just one shot at the pole for next Sunday’s race, running in reverse order to how they ended up yesterday.
Carpenter’s teammate, J.R. Hildebrand, will lead off, followed by Josef Newgarden of Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing, Schmidt Peterson’s Simon Pagenaud, Andretti’s Marco Andretti, Penske’s Will Power, Andretti’s James Hinchcliffe, Penske’s Helio Castroneves, Andretti’s Carlos Munoz and Carpenter.
“It’s one-and-done,” said Carpenter, trying to become the 11th driver in Indianapolis 500 history to win back-to-back poles, the last being Castroneves in 2009 and ’10. “We’ve got to nail it.”
That has been the calling card the past two years for his modest team, whose primary sponsor is Fuzzy’s Vodka, a distillery owned by golfer Fuzzy Zoeller.
“A lot of the speed is found in the race shop, working on the details of the car,” Carpenter said.
It took at least 230 mph to make the top nine, and Carpenter’s last four-lap run with an average speed of 230.611 finally set the pace. Hildebrand ran in 230.027.
Barely missing the top nine was Kurt Busch, who next Sunday will attempt to become just the fourth driver to run the Indianapolis 500 (for the first time) and the NASCAR Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway. Busch was 10th, having to stand on his second run (229.960) because he had to fly to Charlotte to take part in last night’s NASCAR Sprint All-Star race.
But when he finished his run, Busch was third, and the exhilaration he had experienced by putting his Andretti Autosport-prepared car on the edge was apparent.
“I’ve qualified a pro stock dragster a quartermile at a time. I’ve qualified a stock car for 15 years,” said Busch, the 2004 NASCAR champion. “Qualifying at Indy, you have to do it for 10 miles, and you have to do it in the most unnerving conditions with the car. The car is not ready to go 230, but you’ve got to handle it.
“You’re there challenging it, and things whisper to you, ‘Are you over the line, or are you still in the realm of your comfort level?’ There were three moments during that run when I challenged that line, and I didn’t — luckily — step over it.”
He is expected back today to join the latter 24 in the one-shot, one-lap qualifying runs that will set the three-abreast rows four through 11. Also in that group will be all four Ganassi Racing drivers, led by Scott Dixon, whose 15thranked run (229.283) was the best the team could muster.
New Albany’s Graham Rahal found some speed he didn’t have earlier in the week, but over three runs his top was 228.664, just 20th. That would have landed him in the middle of the front row last year, when Carpenter’s pole speed was 228.762.
But 18 drivers were faster than that yesterday, the primary factor being the added boost allowed for their Chevrolet and Honda engines. Although Carpenter has a Chevy, Munoz has a Honda. In the top nine, there are five Honda-powered cars and four with Chevy power.
That difference is almost moot, just like the difference between the big teams and the not-so-big ones such as Fisher-Hartman, Schmidt-Peterson and Carpenter.
“It is just so close,” Newgarden said of the competition in IndyCar. “It’s getting silly.”