Hark! Wednesday dawneth and Indianapolis Motor Speedway is silent with the quiet activities of grass growing, geese landing, money counting and no track action. No doubt, though, that the city of Indianapolis’s hotel suites, TV green rooms and premium car dealerships are humming with complaints about car handling, inadequate qualifying procedures, James Davison and various other surface details that are only significant because this is the race that matters.
Car handling is an issue. The beloved new aero package, with its sleek lines and absence of carbon rear wheel blobs, has scattered and confused the Indycar field like a gaggle of ducklings before an aggressive pigeon. It was an issue for championship luminaries like James Hinchcliffe and Alex Rossi, one missing out on the race and the other fortunate not to, and drivers up and down the paddock tell anyone with a microphone that passes and front-ends will have to be fought for, and anyone outside the top six with 50 laps to go might as well start thinking about how to get a good parking space at Detroit next week.
But the competition in the first three rows is intense. From three-time pole sitter Ed Carpenter to three-time race winner Helio Castroneves. The top ten, and probably quite a few others, are potential winners. There are four Indianapolis rookies in the top 20. Kelly Clarkson is going to sing the national anthem. There’s plenty to occupy us as the laps tick away towards the end of the race and eventually our own demises.
So clear your Sunday, meditate on the lyrics or perhaps just the notes of Back Home Again in Indiana, and think about the novel and surprising structures and territories that could fit inside the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. IT'S INDY BABY.
Look at the issue date. IT'S A SIGN.
Schedule
Just the two days of Indycar running left for this year’s festivities, although all seven(?) Indy Lights drivers will be pootling around on Thursday for practice and qualifying. The important stuff (and some more Indy Lights stuff) is below.
Carb Day: Friday, 25 May
11am-12: Indycar practice
12.30pm: Indy Lights Freedom 100
1.30-3.30: Pit Stop Challenge
Race Day: Sunday, 27 May
6am: Speedway open to public
9.30: Cars to pit lane
10.15: Cars to grid
11: ABC broadcast begins (singing, cliches, the blowing-up of balloons)
12.14pm: Start your engines everyone
12.21: Indy 500 GO!!!
Spotter’s guide
Grid
Track map
Who’s competing? Find out below.
Row One
Pole position on Sunday went for the third time to Ed Carpenter Racing’s proprietor, founder, team leader, mascot and general inspiration Ed Carpenter. His pole speed of 229.618 was about a mile an hour quicker than Penske teammates Simon Pagenaud and Will Power. No one on this front row has won the Indy 500 before, but then again, no one has won the Indy 500 from the front row since 2010. It’s still probably better to qualify on the front row than not.
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Row Two
Last year’s second row contained two F1 world championships, 32 Grand Prix wins and one British F3 championship. This one contains a mere five top-level American open-wheel championships, although it does still possess a driver who has raced and won at Snetterton in Josef Newgarden. Newgarden has the dishonour of being the slowest full-time Penske driver in the field, although he still gets to lead around Coyne’s Sebastien Bourdais and Ed Carpenter’s teammate Spencer Pigot, who won the 2015 Indy Lights championship and seems only to have resurfaced this month.
Row Three
We’re now getting far enough into the pack for the dirty air, if only you could see it, to resemble more a Jackson Pollock than a Mark Rothko. Leading the third row into air vortex hell is Ed Carpenter Racing’s third-in-speed but second-in-popularity Danica Patrick, who may have a car to win. Indycar titans and sometime CART refugees Helio Castroneves and Scott Dixon line up eighth and ninth. They should be in contention to win, unless they drive over a plastic bag or Jay Howard, two things that have happened to Scott Dixon in recent editions.
Row Four
Both Foyt drivers start on row four, as Tony Kanaan and Matheus Leist driving very fast for a team whose cars in recent years have rarely been inclined to to cooperate. TK and AJ returning to Victory Lane, on the 60th anniversary of Foyt’s first race at the Speedway, could only be topped by the Second Coming of Christ literally happening on Gasoline Alley. Marco Andretti, starting on the outside of the fourth row, would also be an emotional winner but c’mooooon.
Row Five
Row five contains the mixedest lot of Indycar drivers you ever saw. On the inside is Dale Coyne’s last minute replacement cum regular driver Zachary Choctaw de Mescalero, in the middle is Andretti Autosport’s Ryan Hunter-Reay, and on the outside is Charlie Kimball, who has taken the Carlin team to the unfamiliar reaches of the top 50 percent of the grid. It might not last.
Row Six
Reigning Indy 500 champion and Snetterton expert Takuma Sato leads the somewhat unglorious row six, ready to spring to the front or indeed to the back depending on what the situation requires. He’s still been Bobby Rahal’s quickest car this month. Kyle Kaiser, reigning Indy Lights champion and possessor of a really cool name, put the sole Juncos entry in the middle of the row, and Robert Wickens occupies the outside. Wickens has not set Indiana alight but has at least bloody qualified.
Row Seven
A potential winner on row seven, did you say? I wasn’t thinking of the fearless, friendless James Davison, whose Foyt entry is supported by the kaleidoscopic nomenclature of Byrd-Hollinger-Belardi, or indeed Max Chilton, Carlin’s second entry and 2017’s determined but ultimately unsuccessful race leader, not that we didn’t all make preliminary bargains with Satan to give his pursuers the speed and courage to overtake. No, I’m talking about twice-near-missed and back-with-Andretti Carlos Munoz, who starts 21st but would be madness to rule out. He also finished tenth last year, which given the performance of his Foyt team last season was probably a showing to match his many second places.
Row Eight
Row eight is that uncanny valley of the Indy 500 grid, set between the fast and competitive regular entries and the charmingly disastrous qualifying efforts of the back two rows. Who better to lead this row round the pace laps than Harding’s Gabby Chaves, endower of a cottage industry of paddock talkers who point out to us unobservant idiots that he’s performed above-averagely yet again. Who joins him? Why, none other than nearly-started-in-last-year’s-race Stefan Wilson, and chaos avatar Sage Karam.
Row Nine
By this time, the qualifying speeds are much more James Hinchcliffe than Ed Carpenter. Leading the row with a not-too-comfortable 225.748 mph is Andretti’s Zach Veach, who according to Wikipedia is a published author. Joining him are mechanical engineering graduate Oriol Servia and fellow brainbox J.R. Hildebrand, who in 2006 did to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology what Tiger Woods did to Stanford and turned down their degree programme in favour of the illustrious, trophy-filled sports career laid out before him. Will JR win trophy number one on Sunday? Well, he might. Disclaimer: this photo is indeed still what comes up first on Google.
Row Ten
Leading the second-worst row around the pace laps is the event horizon of Scott Dixon’s 2017 race, Schmidt Peterson’s Jay Howard. Then it’s Ed Jones, whose slow season in a fast car (or should that be fast season in a slow car?) continues with an inauspicious 29th place start. Rounding out the tenth row is the dough-faced Ohioan Graham Rahal, who secured his place in the show after a scary month with an average speed of 225.327 mph.
Row Eleven
The three drivers who took “concentrating on the race” to its logical extreme are Meyer-Shank-Schmidt-Peterson’s Jack Harvey, Andretti Autosport’s championship contender (and 2016’s rookie winner) Alexander Rossi and final Coyne entrant and son-of-Derek Conor Daly. None of them would be likely to thank you for reminding them that the Indy 500 has been almost won from the eleventh row as recently as 1992.
Not making the field, and watching from their gigantic, gold-fitted homes surrounded by beautiful, supportive people, are Pippa Mann and the luckless and soon-to-be former 2018 championship contender James Hinchcliffe. Are they screaming inside? We’ll never know.
Edit: watch the race BELOW
Looking forward to see what Bourdais can do to stop the Chevys.
) Met up with paulb on arrival as well. Things are coming together. 
