By: Zach Catanzareti, Staff Writer
The fate of 30 drivers was confirmed Saturday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, as the first day of Indianapolis 500 qualifying saw the checkered flag.
And with expected drivers near the front (Team Penske, Ed Carpenter Racing, etc.) there were two driver/teas that wtinessed significant woes, and eventually, failed to secure a spot into the 103 running next Sunday.
Fernando Alonso only managed a 227.224-mph lap, which bumped him from the top 30. The other five drivers who will move to Bump Day Sunday are James Hinchcliffe, Max Chilton, Kyle Kaiser, Sage Karam and Patricio O’Ward.
For Alonso, the troublesome Month of May — that was compounded with an early Turn 3 crash on Wednesday — led to a difficult Saturday afternoon for the 2017 competitor.
“Obviously, we have not been super competitive at any point of the week,” Alonso said. “I think it has been the whole week. Speed is not really there on the car. We will not find it in one night.”
As for the lack of speed, no excuses, said Alonso.
“We didn’t have the speed, so we are where we deserve today,” he said. “I hope for tomorrow we have another chance to be in the race. And if we can’t make it, we can’t make it, and it’s because we don’t deserve it.”
Hinchcliffe had an even tougher qualifying day, as the Arrow Schmidt Peterson Motorsport driver flipped on his side in a violent Turn-2 accident during his first qualifying attempt.
Escaping uninjured, Hinchcliffe returned to make following qualifying runs less than three hours later.
“It’s pretty much a worst-case scnenario,” Hinchcliffe said. “We’re preapred. Obviously, this team is… they’re professionals. They know these things can happen.”
On the other side of the emotional coin was Pippa Mann and Ben Hanley, two udnerdog drivers with first-year teams in the Indy 500. For Mann, her Clauson-Marshall Racing Chevrolet was good enough for 30th, making the day an accomplishment following a bump from the field in 2018.
“I literally had to sit there sweating it out,” Mann said of the final minutes of the session. “And all that was going through my head was not again, please not again, please, please not again.”
Mann, 35, will compete in her seventh Indy 500, and she was thrilled to do it with the CMR team.
“At the moment, this is an Indianapolis 500-only effort for Clauson-Marshall Racing,” she said. “It means a huge amount to me. I’m an odd choice to a lot of people because I’m not a dirt racer, I’m a road racer who’s joined a dirt racing team. But the Clauson family and the Marshall family have kind of become like family to me over the past couple years.
“This has been an incredibly cool experience and I am so glad this ended this way today.”
Rookie Ben Hanley shocked the field when he drove his DragonSpeed chassis well inside the top 30 to make his first Indy 500 start. For the team, it was a huge step toward competing consistently in the NTT IndyCar Series.
“We want to be in it long-term, I think we’ve made it pretty clear,” Hanley said. “We want to find the sponsors that are going to help us achieve that goal. A showing like this is definitely no harm. A lot of the difference you see is down to the money we’ve got behind us.
“We might not need the best pit walling in the garage. But we’re trying to put our funds into the right areas to make the difference on