Co Author: Jamie Cooper
Despite minimal practice time leading up to qualifying weekend, Indiana weather gave the city of Speedway great weather to kick of the first day of 2024 Indianapolis 500 qualifying.
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The largest single day sporting event in the world has a two day qualifying weekend. Day 1 of the 2024 Indianapolis 500 Qualifying solidifies the starting grid from position 13-30. Day 2 includes setting the pole sitter and the remaining top 12. In addition, Day 2 is meant for bump day. The Indy 500 grid is set with 33 entrants. This year there are 34 cars attempting to qualify. On Sunday, the drivers that landed in positions 31-34 will compete in last chance qualifying to make sure they qualify in position 33 for faster. There will be one driver bummed.
Saturday’s qualifying order is set by a random draw of of positions after Fast Friday is concluded.
First Qualifying Attempts
Rinus Veekay of Ed Carpenter Racing made a small correction into turn 3 during his four lap attempt. Due to a little bit of understeer, Veekay crashes into the Turn 3 barrier. Unsure of what caused the issue, Veekay was cleared from medical and his team spent hours to repair his car in order to put up a qualifying time. With just over 2 hours left the team managed to repair his car and set his first official time.
Kyle Larson, 2021 NASCAR Cup champion went out as the sixth car to set a qualifying time. Due to a plenum event during his attempt, Larson bailed on setting a time and returned to the pits.
Callum Illot of Arrow McLaren set a great first attempt that set him in the top 10. Shortly after, Illot’s attempt was disallowed. After post tech inspection, the 6 car was found to have a rear wheel offset which was deemed non-compliant.
O’Ward and Rossi of Arrow McLaren, Scott Dixon, Ryan Hunter Reay opted to pull out of the first running. Teams decided due to poor running positions, it was in their best interests to make adjustments to the cars and opt to run in Lane 1.
All three Penske drivers topped the charts after their first attempts. It was evident after the Thirsty 3’s all qualified in positions 1, 2 and 3, no other team was able to get close to the Penske power. Throughout the course of the day, it was clear that the Chevrolet engines had an large performance advantage over those driving Honda engines.
Chevy Woes
With the Indianapolis 500 qualifying well under way, some of the Chevrolet powered cars suddenly lost power, Kyle Larson, Pato O’Ward, Conor Daly, Christian Rasmussen and Augustin Canapino all suffered similar engine issues. The engine issues stopping some cars from heading into the fast 12.
Rob Buckner, IndyCar Program Manager for Chevrolet explained to Motorsport what the issue was
These engines are being operated on a knife edge here this weekend, and we’re pushing for every bit of performance. So on top of the cylinder heads in the air inlet system of the engine is a plenum, and there’s some port fuel injectors up there, so while these engines are sustained high speed, that plenum is very full of fuel, and if we have any event over a downshift that can ignore that fuel, it ends up evaporating the plenum of its fuel air charge, temperatures rise rapidly, and it pretty much — to the driver it’s a perceived engine kill, and they vary in duration, they vary in severity.
Rob Buckner, IndyCar Program Manager for Chevrolet
Unfortunately, here today, the ones we had were very noticeable to the drivers. Anything around Indianapolis is very noticeable to the drivers. It pretty much scrapped those runs, which we really hate for all those drivers that we impacted their day.
Veekay Takes a Chance and Ericsson faces the Bump
Rinus Veekay and Ed Carpenter Racing took a late gamble, scrapping their first run time to give them an opportunity to move into the fast 12, this was the Indycar equivalent of ALL IN. Veekay duly delivered posting an average speed of 232.419mph and 11th in the standings.
The was no such luck for 2022 Indy 500 winner Marcus Ericsson, who will go up against Katherine Legge, Graham Rahal and Rookie Nolan Sigel on Sunday with one of the three being “bumped” off the 33 car grid and not take part in the Indy 500.
Ericsson, who crashed his speedway car in practice and had to use his road course car for his qualifying runs. Unfortunately for the Swede, the spare didn’t seem to have the same speed as his Andretti Global teammates who have qualified in 5th and 13th.
Day 2 of the Indy 500 Qualifying will no doubt provide more drama, will Chevy sort their engine woes out? Can a Former Indy 500 winner and last years runner up make the race?
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