Bump day was full of drama and some close calls but in the end, the expected 2 missed the final cut along with a suprise omission, Alex Tagliani who missed out after a tactical mixup by his Conquest team meant he was unable to set a time before the end of the day, his teammate Bruno Junqueira though did manage to get his car into the race in 30th place but an agreement afterwards allowed Tagliani to take up the drive in Junqueira's place, as a result of the change of driver, the Canadian moves to the back of the grid. Here then is the remainder of the field.
ROW 8: 22nd Davey Hamilton (Dreyer & Reinbold), 23rd Robert Doornbos (Newman Haas), 24th Townsend Bell (KV Racing)
Dutchman Robert Doornbos was the fastest man in bump day qualifying and thus takes the highest position possible on the grid for him to have, 23rd. he will be joine don the 8th row by Townsend Bell, who gets the third KV Racing entry into the show.
ROW 9: 25th Oriol Servia (Rahal Letterman), 26th Tomas Scheckter (Dale Coyne), 27th Mike Conway (Dreyer & Reinbold)
The popular spaniard Oriol Servia managed to get into the field after a superb show to nail 25th spot in the car racing in famous Eagle colours as driven by the great Dan Gurney for his F1 team in the late 1960's. Tomas Scheckter (son of the 1979 F1 world champion Jody) was a very late deal confirmed for Dale Coyne's 2nd car and the South African did not let down his team owners faith in him by getting the number 18 car onto the grid. And a big round of applause for Mike Conway who defied doctors and a serious rib injury to qualify his car in 27th spot.
ROW 10: 28th John Andretti (Petty), 29th EJ Viso (HVM), 30th Milka Duno (Dreyer & Reinbold)
Finally, Richard Petty (NASCAR legend and 7 times NASCAR champion) will get his first ever crack at the 500 as a team owner after John Andretti ended 2 weeks of nerves to qualify the famous number 43 on the grid in 28th. As for the only British team in the field, they had a raft of problems all week but HVM have recovered well to get both their cars into the race with Viso the best of the 2 in 29th spot while Milka Duno makes it 3 Dreyer & Reinbold cars in the field as she managed to get her CITGO entry into an Indy best 30th spot
ROW 11: 31st Nelson Philippe (HVM), 32nd Ryan Hunter-Reay (Vision), 33rd Alex Tagliani (Conquest)
Nelson Philippe, the young Frenchman helped HVM boss Keith Wiggins breathe a huge sigh of relief as his final run in the closing stages got him in while early season sensation Hunter-Reay has had a nightmare 2 weeks of practice after suffering problem after problem, but he finally managed to get it right at last to take the final spot by just 0.021 seconds from Barrett. Tagliani's entry has been demoted from 30th to the back after a driver swap with Bruno Junqueira.
DID NOT QUALIFY: 34th Stanton Barrett (3G), 35th Bruno Junqueira (Conquest) 36th Buddy Lazier (Hemelgarn)
These are the unlucky 3 drivers that have suffered the indignity of having an Indy 500 DNQ next to their name, two of them suffered simply by not being quick enough, Barrett however was extremely unlucky after missing out by just over 2 hundreths of a second over the 4 lap. Lazier, himself a former winner was however off the pace throughout the 2 weeks and unsuprisingly turned up at the bottom of the timesheets, Junqueira sits it out after swapping with Alex Tagliani.
No comments:
Post a Comment