Indianapolis 500 on Sunday, delaying scheduled
qualifying for the race .Qualifying, which was originally scheduled to
begin at 10 a.m. ET, was delayed until 3:15 p.m.
“This morning we saw a third car get into the wall, turn backward and
lift into the air. We’ve said all along we want to go faster, but we
want to do so safely,” Mark Miles, the CEO of Hulman & Company, the
parent company of IndyCar, said in a statement.
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“As a precautionary measure, IndyCar will require that the cars
qualify today in the same aero setup that they will run in the
Indianapolis 500 next weekend. Also, for today, boost levels will return
to race conditions. Given these changes, we have elected to not award
points for today’s qualifications.
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“Safety for drivers and fans is the top priority for IndyCar and we
will continue to be proactive in our research and development to improve
all safety aspects of our sport.”
Each of the 34 cars will be given one qualifying attempt and the top
30 spots will then be locked in. If time and weather permit, a 45-minute
qualifying session will determine the final three starting spots in the
May 24 race, and which car will be headed home.
Carpenter, who is trying to become the first driver to win three
consecutive Indy 500 poles, spun into the Turn 2 wall and flipped over
before the car came to rest on its side.
He was checked and released from the track’s infield medical center a short time later.
“It caught me by surprise,” Carpenter said. “I wasn’t expecting to
swap ends. The car was actually feeling pretty good, better than it did
yesterday. Things are a little unpredictable right now.”
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Carpenter’s crash at Indianapolis Motor Speedway was similar to that of his CFH Racing teammate Josef Newgarden.
Newgarden lost control, hit the wall, and flipped his car on
Thursday, a day after Helio Castroneves also went airborne during a
crash that first raised questions about the safety of the new
superspeedway aero kits.
Carpenter, Newgarden and Castroneves all drive Chevrolet cars.
Sunday’s crash prompted a closed-door meeting between IndyCar Series
officials and team owners from the Chevrolet-powered teams as track
workers tried to fix the damaged catch-fence.
“Chevrolet met with IndyCar this morning and the decision was made to
run race-level aerodynamics and engine boost during qualifying in an
effort to reduce speeds and increase downforce. We continue to review
all available data from the crashes. Safety is our priority,” Jim
Campbell, Chevrolet’s U.S. vice president for performance vehicles and
motorsports, said.
That was followed by meetings with officials from Honda Performance
Development and Honda team owners, who are reportedly unhappy about
being forced to make last-minute changes to their cars in response to
what they perceive as a problem unique to the Chevrolet cars.
“Even though we have every confidence in our design, we support
IndyCar in their efforts to improve safety,” HPD president Art St. Cyr
said in a statement.
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IndyCar Series officials refused to single out Chevrolet’s aero kit,
which features an unusually small rear wing with no traditional end
plates, as the cause of the three crashes this week that ended with cars
upside down and airborne.
As the series’ only owner/driver, Carpenter was in the unique
position of attending the manufacturer meetings with IndyCar as a
Chevrolet team owner.
“There’s a lot to understand and I don’t think it’s fair to say that this is an aero kit issue,” Carpenter said.
“We have multiple variables going on this year. We have new tires,
there’s a new underwing [floor] with a huge hole in it, and aero kits.
“It’s all just speculation at this point and we really need to learn what’s causing this.”
Pippa Mann was the only driver to crash a Honda this week in practice, but that car remained upright on the track.
“Ultimately if we are not certain what is causing this, we can’t say
for certain if this is a Chevy problem or a Honda problem,” Miles said.
“We’re left in a situation where we need to be cautious.
“This is a complex technical situation, but ultimately, the decision was based on that.”
Saturday’s session was rained out after only two drivers completed
the four-lap qualifying procedure. A third driver, Scott Dixon, finished
one lap before the yellow flag came out because of light rain. They
wiped out the averages of both qualifiers, Carlos Huertas and Ryan
Hunter-Reay.
Organizers then revised Sunday’s schedule to give drivers two short
practice sessions in the morning.They couldn’t be ignored. And the why
wasn’t the issue hours before qualifying.
“It wasn’t a matter of the crashes,” defending series champion Will
Power said. “We used to have crashes every single day here with the old
car, but it was more the fact that when you crash, you take off. The
cars were flipping over. That was the reason for the change. They had to
do something.”
IndyCar spent six years birthing aerodynamic body kits as a means of
bringing ingenuity and innovation back to the old test track turned
greatest American racing venue.
It got what it wanted and currently that is a problem. But it’s perhaps not one the series could have foreseen.
Lineup: What you should know about the 33-driver field
The ability to manipulate a myriad of chassis pieces has given teams a
multitude of options to not only strike upon a Eureka moment that
produces a trophy but a moment of horror that yields injury, especially
at a flat, sharp-turned venue devised for the cars of early last
century.
And there was no way to test how all that would transpire in
Indianapolis until teams began putting a toe over the unseen line of no
return, Power said.
“How can you understand what a car does backwards at 220 mph?” he pondered.
Power believes the culpability for the crashes ultimately lies with
the teams, and all three high-profile incidents “were people taking big
risks on trimming out too much.”
CARPENTER: Misses out on third straight Indy 500 pole
But he, like most of his peers – even Honda drivers Graham Rahal and,
less vocally, Hunter-Reay, who think the changes broaden their
performance shortfall with Chevrolet – agree that something had to be
done. None of the three crashes had injured a driver. There was no
assurance for the fourth.
“It’s unfortunate as Honda cars we had a really good balance and we
had to change,” said Hunter-Reay, who noted he went from roughly 1 mph
slower than pole-winner Scott Dixon on Saturday to almost 3 mph slower
Sunday. “But in the name of safety … I’d like to get all the information
first before I comment on it.”
HUNTER-REAY: Defending Indy 500 champ not confident of repeat
Rahal Letterman Lanigan team owner Bobby Rahal, whose organization
utilizes Hondas, and who saw driver Paul Dana killed after a morning
warm-up crash in 2006:
“I don’t think anybody wants to risk killing some guy because every
time one of these things gets up into a fence, chances are there you’re
going to hurt a driver,” he told USA TODAY Sports. “I don’t think
anybody wants to risk that. … Nobody can definitive say it wouldn’t
happen to a Honda if it got backwards. If not somebody would say, ‘Oh,
(Honda) paid the penalty.’ I would sure rather pay that penalty than
somebody getting hurt.”
