Day two of qualifying for this years Indianapolis 500 opened with nine spots still left in the starting field and IndyCar's biggest star, Danica Patrick, on the oustside looking in.
With rain predicted the day began with 15 drivers vying for the final nine starting positions. A morning crash ended the day for last-minute substitute Patrick Carpentier in a Dragon Racing car. Carpentier spun and made heavy contact with the Turn One wall in the final minutes of practice. The incident ended Dragon Racing's run at making the ‘500’. Rookie Ho-Pin Tung crashed Dragon’s other entry during a qualifying run on Saturday.
Actual qualifying began at noon and, with rain threatening, Team Penske’s Ryan Briscoe, in a backup car after his crash in yesterday’s practice, Chip Ganassi Racing teammates Graham Rahal and Charlie Kimball, Pippa Mann for Conquest Racing and Dreyer and Reinbold Racing’s Ana Beatriz all completed qualifying runs. As rain began to fall, Paul Tracy finished his 4 laps setting the fastest qualifying run of the day at 225.939 mph.
Heavy rain arrived just before 2 p.m. EDT, with all 33 positions filled and Alex Lloyd on the “bubble” as the slowest qualifier. IndyCar headliner Danica Patrick and four others, including her Andretti Autosport teammate and Long Beach race winner Mike Conway, had yet to make the field.
The rain moved out and after a tremendous effort by track personnel to dry the two–and-a-half-mile track qualifying resumed at 4:45 pm. Patrick quickly put in a four-lap run of 224.861, second fastest of the day, to bump Lloyd and safely make the field. A collective sigh of relief could be heard coming from race officials, IndyCar marketing personnel and from the television production trailer now that the series’ most recognizable and marketable driver was in the race.
With Marco Andretti now “on the bubble” as the slowest qualifier, Mike Conway, Raphael Matos, Sebastian Saavedra and James Jakes all made multiple qualifying attempts, but none had the speed to make the field and bump Andretti. But in his final attempt, Alex Lloyd recorded a lap of 223.957 to bump Andretti, whose teammate, Ryan Hunter-Reay, was now on the bubble.
With less than a minute to go in qualifying Andretti went out to make one last attempt to get in the race. As the gun that ends qualifying was fired, Andretti ran some of his fastest laps of the week and re-qualifying with a speed of 224.628 mph, but in doing so knocked teammate Hunter-Reay from this year’s 500-mile race.
After his run Andretti said, “That was new for me. I knew we would be hanging it out there at the end, it would be ‘stick it in the fence or stick in the show’. I feel for [teammates] Ryan [Hunter-Reay] and Mike [Conway] as well. They’re two of the best in the business. Mike at least won at Long Beach. Ryan has had terrible luck this year; he should have won a couple of races already. I was expecting it to come down to the wire. We came up with the speed at the end, but we were really risking it. Someone was looking over me today. I was lucky.” (source : sportscarillustrated.com)
