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(12:15,
IMS time) Work issues continue to keep me away from Indy for
most of the month of May again this year, but I have been fortunate
enough to have had sympathetic and understanding employers that
I have only missed one Indy 500 since 1993. I'm sitting here
watching the TV coverage and building this pole day page. As
I posted earlier here, I doubt they will wait long this
afternoon before calling off the Pole Day qualifying runs.
IndyCar officials won't want to start qualifying so late in the
afternoon that there isn't enough time to give every driver a
run at the pole position. As I write this, I just got
the phone call, the day is a washout, they have postponed Pole
Day, and will run tomorrow, qualifying 22 cars in one day.
Like
everyone with a love for Indy events, I was disappointed to
learn that we wouldn't see the first example of the new
qualifying format today, whereby only the fastest eleven cars
would have been slotted, but not locked into the Indy 500 field.
I'm felling much better about the decision now, having just
watched the ESPN interview of Brian Barnhart, I'm anxiously
awaiting the Sunday "Q" runs. Consider this, since
each car has three chances at not just the pole, but maximizing
their starting position as well. These teams will have big
decisions to make, including the possibility of withdrawing a qualified
car late in the afternoon, to take another shot at the pole
position with the backup car. There is a price to pay in
multiple practice and "Q" runs, while engine
reliability is no longer the issue it was in the past, when
every run was an edge of the seat affair, wondering if the
special qualifying engine would even last the required ten
miles, with every P&Q run, you take a little of the
"fresh" out of the engine. Make no mistake about it,
since you aren't required to start the race with the engine you
qualified with, these are special engines, if only that they are
the strongest examples of a production run. Enter Team Penske,
the Indy-dominator, they are the only team that actually builds
their own engines, and if any team has the option for a special
qualifying "bullet it would be MTP. Not to be outdone,
Honda too has their allotted R&D team, Andretti Green Racing
and their four-driver lineup. AGR gets their engines from HPD in
California, the the rest of the the Honda teams get their
engines from Ilmor in Michigan shipped by the big silver truck.
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