1. We can only start with James Hinchcliffe being bumped from the Indianapolis 500. Most likely had him toward the top of the timesheet. Maybe not the Fast Nine but first half of the grid. Nobody saw this coming. I didn't see this coming. The man who entered this weekend fifth in the championship after five consecutive top ten finishes to start the season had all the breaks go against him. He was the first to track the track after the first rain delay. A rubber-less surface cooking in post-storm sunshine and it caught him off guard.
You cannot blame him for waiting to make his second attempt until he had to. There are too many risks. Withdrawing and crashing. Not withdrawing and crashing. Confidence shaken in an unfamiliar situation leads to conservative decision-making. You don't go until your hand is forced.
Hindsight is 20/20. It is a blessing. It is a curse. Yes, Schmidt Peterson Motorsports should have had in at the front of the non-withdrawal line earlier or just put him in the withdrawal line behind the re-qualifiers of Oriol Servià and Conor Daly and been on the offensive but the offensive can get you burned. We saw that in 2010 with Paul Tracy and Jay Howard. Both drivers withdrew times neither were comfortable with and they ended up on the outside while Sebastián Saavedra, laid up in a hospital bed after a practice crash earlier in Bump Day, got into the field.
It all comes down to timing and everything that could go wrong at the worst time did for Hinchcliffe.
2. With that said, do not be surprised if James Hinchcliffe starts the 102nd Indianapolis 500 next week. This is a business. This is a team sport. Jay Howard is the sacrificial lamb. He should have known from the start. There is no guarantee Howard will get the hook for Hinchcliffe but who is fifth in the championship? Who is Honda's poster boy? Who has the full season sponsor? Who is more likely to give you a shot at winning the Indianapolis 500?
If it happens or it doesn't I will not be surprised by either. SPM might respect what Howard did today in getting his car to 18th. After all, there is still a qualifying round tomorrow. Does SPM wait, let Howard qualify and then pull him for Hinchcliffe and have Hinchcliffe start 33rd or pull Howard before tomorrow, have Hinchcliffe qualify and get to keep the starting position? Oh, we are getting ahead of ourselves.
3. James Hinchcliffe was not the only one on the outside. Pippa Mann failed to qualify for the Indianapolis 500 for the first time in her career. The ABC broadcast closed with a weeping Mann hunched over while photographers took the official post-qualifying photos. She looked on the verge of collapsing from disappointment. Two drivers were always going to miss. It was never going to be a pretty sight.
4. Moving to the front of the grid and the only question is how did Honda get it this wrong? After being the dominant manufacture the last two years, Honda has two cars in the Fast Nine. Andretti Autosport was shutout of the Fast Nine for the first time since 2011. Alexander Rossi came close but he along with his five teammates, the Foyt drivers of Tony Kanaan, Matheus Leist and Ed Jones to name a few shooting for tenth tomorrow.
5. It seemed like a Team Penske pole position waiting to happen but Ed Carpenter jumped up and split Hélio Castroneves and Simon Pagenaud. Will Power rounded out the top four with Sébastien Bourdais in fifth. Spencer Pigot had his best day ever at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and was sixth with Josef Newgarden in seventh. Scott Dixon had a second attempt move him up to eighth while Danica Patrick rounded out the top nine.
Carpenter has proved multiple times to spoil the Penske party but we would not be surprised if the likes of Pagenaud, Power and/or Newgarden jumped up the order and dropped Carpenter to row two. Outside of Newgarden, it is hard to imagine anyone outside the top four winning pole position. The Chevrolets have the legs over the Hondas. Bourdais will give it ago but barring a few cars getting hit by big gusts of winds or surges in track temperature he should be happy with a spot on row two, same with Dixon.
6. I want to talk about Danica Patrick because everyone else is talking about Danica Patrick. Over the years I have avoided slipping into the Patrick-hysteria with everyone focusing on her regardless of her position in NASCAR and I never wandered into the what ifs of a return to IndyCar. Now she is here and she is another competitor. Her personality might put people off and all she has to show for her career is one victory over ten years ago at Twin Ring Motegi but she is someone special at Indianapolis.
Her average finish in seven Indianapolis 500 starts is 8.714 with six top ten finishes in this race. Of 248 drivers that have made at least five Indianapolis 500 starts she ranks eighth all-time in average finish. Eighth out of 248! Bill Holland, Ted Horn, Jimmy Murphy, Harry Hartz, Hélio Castroneves, Dan Wheldon and Carlos Muñoz are the seven drivers ahead of her. Even if she finishes 33rd next week her average finish will be 11.75, tied with Michael Andretti and ahead of Arie Luyendyk, Bobby Rahal, Jim Clark and A.J. Foyt to name a few.
Numbers don't tell the whole story but shit, at worst she will end her career with top ten finishes in 75% of her Indianapolis 500 starts. What more could you ask of a driver? I will not say she is one of the greatest driver all-time or one of the greatest drivers not to win the Indianapolis 500 but I will say, regardless of next week's result, Danica Patrick was a damn fine driver at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Anyone who argues against it doesn't know what they are talking about.
7. Outside of those already mentioned, who deserves some acknowledgment?
How about the briefly mentioned Carlos Muñoz? He was 16th today and we know he can do better but he is an underrated driver and should be full-time. I think Kyle Kaiser and Juncos Racing deserves a shout for being 21st after many pegged him to be in the bumping discussion after some less than stellar practice days.
Oriol Servià deserves some praise after a handful of qualifying attempts gone wrong and really we should talk about Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing as a whole. What is missing from this team, especially at Indianapolis Motor Speedway? Takuma Sato was the team's best qualifier and he was 29th! Graham Rahal was 30th with Servià in 31st! This has to be the team's wake up call that something has to change for Indianapolis. Rahal has been getting results this year and pending Hinchcliffe's status for race day Rahal could be the only driver with top ten finishes in the first six races of the season but he has been doing it from terrible starting positions this season. This team isn't lost but it needs some direction.
Just behind the RLLR trio was Conor Daly and again he finds himself looking for a break. It was unfortunate that he lost his ride with A.J. Foyt Racing after last year. Results were improving in a lame duck and learning year for the team, as the team had just switched to Chevrolet and was strapped with the Chevrolet aero kit for one season. Daly catches a lot of shit but he isn't a schlub. His return to Dale Coyne Racing has been rougher than expected and while DCR has the ability to get Bourdais into the fight for pole position it shows it is still a minnow as its other three cars were 26th for Zachary Claman De Melo, 32nd for Daly and out of the field for Mann.
Finally, shout out to James Davison because he seemed to be on the verge of a breakdown after his accident yesterday. He got in by the skin of his teeth. I can only imagine the relief he had to feel. But once again we see an additional Indianapolis 500 entry struggle while full-time entries are comfortably in the field. Kanaan and Leist both were in the conversation for the Fast Nine. Davison was outside the top thirty for pretty much the entire week. Somebody has to go home but I didn't expect this big of disparity between Davison and the other two Foyt drivers.
8. Rules... Where to begin?
How about with the format?
A lot happened today and this showed a problem with Bump Day coming first. You had at least four cars trying to fight for the final positions while other teams wanted to go for the Fast Nine but simultaneously those teams hoping to move into the Fast Nine weren't go to risk withdrawing their times and I think the two lanes worked today. It is a bit confusing and we can debate over the idea of there being a safety net but with this being the only day to make the field I do not blame teams only going out if they had a time to sit on as insurance.
I would love to go back to one lane and teams having to withdraw a time if they want to re-qualify but only if you had two days to make the field. Without the two lanes nobody would roll the dice to go out for a second shot at making the Fast Nine. The risk was not worth the reward. If there were two days to make the field, Pole Day leading off on Saturday and then Bump Day on Sunday, teams would feel fine withdrawing times and going for the Fast Nine. You would have a percentage of the field that felt it had a shot, another percentage that would know it couldn't make the Fast Nine but were not in danger of being bumped and that final fraction of the field sweating into Sunday.
IndyCar knows the current Indianapolis 500 qualifying format is a clusterfuck. Let's simplify this and reverting to the previous format would not be regression for IndyCar. There is no need for hoops. It should be straightforward. I like the Fast Nine session. We could keep that. But let's go back to Pole Day being 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET on Saturday with an hour break before the Fast Nine starting at 5:00 p.m. ET. Then have Bump Day be open from noon to 6:00 p.m. ET on Sunday with practice throughout the day for teams already qualified and ending the need for the Monday practice.
9. I guess that is the only rule I wanted to talk about. This used to be the feeling at the end of the weekend. Now we have to try and roll out of bed and get excited for the run for pole position tomorrow. There is a bit of emptiness tonight. You watched two people get crushed. Tomorrow there will euphoria. Will we be over what happened the day before? Sleep tight.
