Servia fastest in 10-33 qualifying to nail inside of fourth row
Oriol Servia set the fastest time in final qualifying to guarantee Schmidt Peterson Motorsports-Honda will have three cars in the top 10 for the 100th Running of the Indy 500.
Photo by: Jay Alley
The Catalan set three laps over 229mph and one 228, to clear the rest of the field by 0.6mph and display a consistency lacking in his runs yesterday. Expected challenges from Andretti Autosport-Honda’s Marco Andretti and Alexander Rossi and Team Penske-Chevrolet’s Juan Pablo Montoya failed to materialize for a variety of reasons.
Talk of the session was the strange incident that happened to Montoya who hit a black trash bag on his third lap, which understandably put him off his game. IndyCar granted him a second run, and on fresh tires, and the defending Indy 500 champion set an average of 227.584mph which will see him starting 17th.
Marco Andretti was warned even before he started his run that fifth gear wasn’t working and so would have to leave it in sixth, which risked him bogging down in the headwind down the backstraight. In fact he went well on his opening lap to set a 229.1 but dropped to 226.4 by his fourth lap, resulting in P14.
Teammate Rossi will start directly in front of him, his run hurt by a poor opening lap.
Chip Ganassi Racing continued to struggle for ultimate pace in qualifying trim, even aside from the fact that Scott Dixon’s #9 crew had to complete an engine change when the Chevrolet died at the end of morning practice. The crew performed admirably to complete the task in 64 minutes, and Dixon matched their efforts with a safe run that saw him grab a 227.991 average, the inside of the fifth row. That still enabled him to be faster than his three teammates, Charlie Kimball, 2013 winner Tony Kanaan and rookie Max Chilton.
Two-time polesitter Ed Carpenter was slowest of the ECR cars and will start the race from 20th. Graham Rahal was disappointed with his run which will see him start from 26th on the 30th anniversary of his father’s victory here. However, the American said he was confident in his car’s performance in race trim, but was more upset at the amount of points he will lose to his closest rivals in the Verizon IndyCar Series championship.
Gabby Chaves headed Dale Coyne Racing’s quartet, by grabbing the outside of the seventh row, while KV Racing’s rookies Matt Brabham and Stefan Wilson had safe runs to take 27th and 30th respectively, compared with veteran teammate Sebastien Bourdais’ 19th.
The last row will consist of two AJ Foyt Racing-Hondas, either side of 1996 Indy winner Buddy Lazier. Alex Tagliani will start last after crashing on his way to the green flag.
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