INDIANAPOLIS – Santino Ferrucci knows full well what it takes to contend for pole at the Indianapolis 500, and the AJ Foyt Racing driver is at his most comfortable being uncomfortable.
But he also knows the biggest prize pays out next weekend.
And so Ferrucci, as he and his No. 14 Chevy crew searched for speed Sunday morning in the day’s lone 30-minute practice session before he’d make a single four-lap qualifying run at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway that would determine whether he’d vie for pole, placed a key decision at the feet of his team’s president, Larry Foyt:
“It’s his car, and it was his decision,” Ferrucci told reporters Sunday, referring to his declaration to Foyt on Sunday morning that he’d drive whatever car the team put underneath him for the all-or-nothing run with the Fast 12 on the line – whether it be mega-loose or uber conservative.
“And we definitely chose the conservative route. We’ve got a really good race car…”
The pitch of Ferrucci’s voice dipped just a hair, an air of disappointment lingering. There was just one qualifying run to slot directly into one of the final 21 spots in the 33-car field following a day-long deluge Saturday that wiped out Day 1 of Indy 500 qualifying. The series would not have enough time in Sunday’s schedule to give teams the typical opportunity to learn from their first run and then go back out once, twice or even three times more, learning from every attempt.
Throwing every last bit of potential into it, trimming off downforce for potential maximum speed, could lead to even Ferrucci, who can wrangle a handful of a racecar just about as well as anyone in the field, losing it into the wall and potentially risking the primary car the team would have spent the better part of the last 12 months perfecting.
Set the car up too cautiously, and you could lose out on a chance to go down in history.
Lucky for Ferrucci, the Foyt crew toed the line to a T, even if that initial four-lap run “was probably the easiest qualifying run I’ve done here in all my years,” said Ferrucci, who is seven-for-seven on top-10 Indy 500 finishes in his career and who would go on to nab the fifth starting spot for next Sunday’s edition of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing.
Almost uniformly, teams leaned on the conservative side in how they prepped their cars for their decisive attempts with the Fast 12 on the line Sunday afternoon, even if one could argue it might’ve been the time for teams teetering on the brink of advancing to push all their chips to the center of the table. After all, there was no risk in this year’s 500 of stepping over the edge, crashing unnecessarily and putting your team in a scramble to put the car back together just to have a shot at making the race in the Last Chance Qualifier.
The worst your day could go Sunday would be starting 33rd in a week – a pain and a penalty no doubt, but if it’s at the expense of giving yourself a shot at starting in the first four rows, and you think you’re close, perhaps it’s a risk worth taking?
“I guess it can go both ways,” Arrow McLaren’s Christian Lundgaard, who qualified 19th, said after his lone run. “Because now the rest of the day, you don’t have to worry about trying to go and do another run.
“And I don’t know if that’s going to be good enough.”
Having drawn the fourth spot in the qualifying line during Friday night’s draw, Ed Carpenter, too, was left scratching his head and wondering what might’ve been, had he had one more shot left to take his learnings from run No. 1 and give it another go.
“I’m used to the one shot at it in the later rounds,” the three-time Indy 500 polesitter who seven times has started on the front two rows said. “The balance surprised me a bit on the last lap, but that’s the way it goes.”
Ultimately, Carpenter would slot in 14th, bumped out of the Fast 12 by Chip Ganassi Racing’s Kyffin Simpson with just four more attempts left.
“I thought we were being on the conservative side. I think we had the downforce just right; maybe we were just a little bit off on the balance,” he continued. “If I could do it again, I know what I would do, and I think my teammates will be in good shape, so they should be able to learn from it.”
Christian Rasmussen, the younger driver on Carpenter’s namesake team, qualified just two spots behind his team owner in 16th, but Alexander Rossi, the 2016 Indy 500 winner, best took advantage of the learnings from Carpenter, despite drawing 20th in line.
“That was hard. Definitely the trickiest it’s been all week,” said Rossi, who qualified sixth-fastest for the Fast 12 and then maintained that position as the last car to qualify for the Fast 6 before earning the second starting spot for Sunday’s Indy 500 – a career-best. “I think we were more conservative for sure, because you can’t afford to try and go big and get it done in one run.
“You have to kinda balance the risk and the conservative approach, just because you can’t go out and add downforce and do it all over again.”
And for some – even some of the most accomplished drivers in the field – that ‘all-in’ nature of early Sunday afternoon had them on edge.
“I think that was the most nervous I’ve been (here), cause it’s just one shot,” said Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin, the 2024 Indy 500 polesitter who crashed last year on the parade lap from the 10th spot on the grid and who qualified ninth for Sunday’s 500. “But I don’t mind it though. It’s kinda exciting.
“I don’t think it’s a tradition we should go away from, but it’s exciting to do something different. I said (to my team), ‘Let’s try and do the easiest hybrid deploy target for the run, and I knew going into it it was going to be difficult out there, but it was just a matter of putting it together.”
But that doesn’t mean ‘putting it together’ was easy.
Asked if he was on the limit, McLaughlin responded simply, “You (expletive) know it.”
So, too, was the day’s dominant driver in the first two rounds, Felix Rosenqvist, who qualified fourth in Sunday’s Fast 6.
“It was a really good car, really quick on the first lap – perfect,” said the Meyer Shank Racing driver of his initial run that topped the full-field round of qualifying, before pacing the ensuing groups again twice more. “But then I started losing the rears, and it got really sketchy for the last two laps. And at that point, I was just trying to keep it out of the wall.
“I kinda had to go for it a bit more than you usually would (in Round 1). On a normal day, you’d at least have the option to go back out again. I got really loose on my last two laps, and if it was a normal (Saturday), you might kinda lift, but I was just very committed to finishing the run. I knew it was good, so I just had to stay out of the wall.”
The day’s final results very nearly looked wildly different.
Having drawn a raucous response from the IMS crowd after he landed the 31st spot in line from Friday evening’s qualifying draw – a rare bout of bad luck for a driver who’s won four championships in five years, not to mention a 500 pole and Borg-Warner Trophy – Alex Palou nearly lost out on the Fast 12 altogether, sliding into the 11th spot with two cars left to run.
Had the first round of Indy 500 qualifying followed the typical format, Palou said he would’ve stayed in his own world and solely focused on his own data, not worrying about his teammates’ metrics and results. And had he drawn a starting spot in line near the front, the No. 10 crew would’ve had to go into that decisive run largely blind.
Drawing No. 31 meant Palou & Co. had hours to look at CGR teammate Scott Dixon’s data, not to mention all three cars from technical partner MSR and Simpson, who ran two spots ahead in the initial string of runs.
Squeaking through into the Fast 12 gave Palou another life. He rode that all the way to pole.
“Normally, I’d just focus on what my No. 10 car was doing and what it felt like Friday, but today, you’re asking them, ‘How did that downforce feel?’” he said of his teammates. “We needed to focus on all that just to make it to the Fast 12.
“You’ve always got to try and listen, but today a lot more.”
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Saturday rainout helps deliver Sunday drama for Indy 500 qualifying
Reporting by Nathan Brown, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
