Their primary car was built by McLaren (that Alonso crashed early on Day 2), but the backup car was half-Carlin/half-salvaged McLaren. Only one of the Carlin-affiliated cars made the field, in Charlie Kimball. (Carlin's team boss said Pato was pushing Chilton much harder earlier in the year...sure looks like Charlie got the last laugh).

In the end, 4 of the 6 in the last row shootout had a huge accident during practice or qualifying. It just shows the importance of taking care of your equipment. That drama was exactly what Indy is all about.

For Juncos and Kaiser, this is huge, and they'll have a sponsor in short order.

Quote:

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Indy 500 Lineup (all times in mph)

Row 1

1. No. 22 Simon Pagenaud, Chevrolet, 229.992
2. No. 20 Ed Carpenter, Chevrolet, 229.889
3. No. 21 Spencer Pigot, Chevrolet, 229.826

Row 2

4. No. 63 Ed Jones, Chevrolet, 229.646
5. No. 88 Colton Herta, Honda, 229.086
6. No. 12 Will Power, Chevrolet, 228.645

Row 3

7. No. 18 Sebastien Bourdais, Honda, 228.621
8. No. 2 Josef Newgarden, Chevrolet, 228.396
9. No. 27 Alexander Rossi, Honda, 228.247

Row 4

10. No. 98 Marco Andretti, Honda, 228.756
11. No. 25 Conor Daly, Honda, 228.617
12. No. 3 Helio Castroneves, Chevrolet, 228.523

Row 5

13. No. 7 Marcus Ericsson, Honda, 228.511
14. No. 30 Takuma Sato, Honda, 228.300
15. No. 33 James Davison, Honda, 228.273

Row 6

16. No. 14 Tony Kanaan, Chevrolet, 228.120
17. No. 15 Graham Rahal, Honda, 228.104
18. No. 9 Scott Dixon, Honda, 228.100

Row 7

19. No. 77 Oriol Servia, Honda, 227.991
20. No. 23 Charlie Kimball, Chevrolet, 227.915
21. No. 48 JR Hildebrand, Chevrolet, 227.908

Row 8

22. No. 28 Ryan Hunter-Reay, Honda, 227.877
23. No. 19 Santino Ferrucci, Honda, 227.731
24. No. 4 Matheus Leist, Chevrolet, 227.717

Row 9

25. No. 60 Jack Harvey, Honda, 227.695
26. No. 42 Jordan King, Honda, 227.502
27. No. 81 Ben Hanley, Chevrolet, 227.482

Row 10

28. No. 26 Zach Veach, Honda, 227.341
29. No. 10 Felix Rosenqvist, Honda, 227.297
30. No. 39 Pippa Mann, Chevrolet, 227.244

Row 11

31. No. 24 Sage Karam, Chevrolet, 227.740
32. No. 5 James Hinchcliffe, Honda, 227.543
33. No. 32 Kyle Kaiser, Chevrolet, 227.372

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Also, heads begin to roll at McLaren:

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McLaren IndyCar president Robert Fernley is leaving the team, RaceFans has learned from sources with knowledge of situation.

Fernley was placed on gardening leave pending his departure less than 24 hours after Fernando Alonso failed to qualify for the Indianapolis 500.

...

Fernley, who was previously deputy team principal at Force India, was put in charge of McLaren's IndyCar programme in November last year. The team purchased two Dallara DW12 chassis for its single-car entry into this year's Indy 500, the only race of the 17-round IndyCar season it is contesting. Part of Fernley's remit included assessing the potential for a long-term involvement in the series by McLaren.

Source

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McLaren's failed Indy 500 effort was a comedy of errors

Quote:

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"I don't think we came into this arrogant, I think we were unprepared," Brown said. "We didn't deserve to be in the race and it's our own fault. It's not like we showed up and gave our best. We defeated ourselves."

The path to missing the 33-driver field began when the car was not ready the moment Texas Motor Speedway opened for the April test. Brown had personally secured a steering wheel the previous week from Cosworth to use for the test, and the mistakes piled up from there.

"We didn't get out until midday, our steering wheel was not done on time, that's just lack of preparation and project management organizational skills," Brown said. "That's where this whole thing fell down, in the project management. Zak Brown should not be digging around for steering wheels."

...

McLaren purchased a car from technical partner Carlin, and though the car was orange when McLaren received it, it was not the proper McLaren "papaya orange." It had to be repainted after the test, and that still had not been completed when Alonso crashed his McLaren-built car last Wednesday.

The Carlin spare was in a paint shop 30 minutes from the track, more than a month after McLaren complained about the color, and it ultimately cost McLaren almost two full days of track time. The team looked foolish as other teams were able to move into backup cars in mere hours; James Hinchcliffe crashed in Saturday qualifying and was back on track in his spare that afternoon.

...

"I should have been closer to Indy but I could never compromise Formula One," Brown said. "At 9:01 in the morning when we weren't on track at the first test, that's when we failed to qualify for the Indianapolis 500. We didn't ring the fire alarm quick enough because we could have recovered after the first test.

"I am angry at myself because I was uncomfortable all the way up to the first test and I should have followed my instinct to get more involved."

...

"Gil and I went to the motorhome and told Fernando: 'We are going to try this, but this could go well or really wrong. Are you comfortable?'" Brown said. "And Fernando said, 'Let's go for it.'"

Alonso agreed that he never backed away from the challenge.

"We went out with an experiment that we did overnight. We changed everything on the car because we thought that maybe we need something from the mental side different to go into the race with some confidence," Alonso said. "We went out not knowing what the car will do in Turn 1, but you're still flat. So we tried."

...

"We actually had a 229 (mph) car but we had 227.5 gearing, so we beat ourselves again while we almost made it," Brown said. "We really did put it all on the line and you could feel the anxiety. There was some real heroism in that. I don't want the world to think McLaren is a bunch of idiots because while we did have a few, we had some real stars."

...

What's next is a careful lookback as Brown figures out McLaren's future at both the Indy 500 and the IndyCar Series. He still wants to field two full-time entries in the series but isn't sure yet how much of a setback this has been. He believes McLaren will be back next year at Indy for a second chance.

"I feel an obligation to the fans and sponsors, we let them down. We didn't fulfill our promise and I think they need more than just an apology," Brown said. "There will be repercussions for those who don't deserve to work for a great team like McLaren. We will look at what we learned here and the list is a mile long. I hope people appreciate that we go for it, we are racers, and Fernando is a star and we are not quitters. We want to come back."

---

It's a lengthy article overall, but damn.

I'm ready for Sunday!

I'm looking forward to not being lulled into narcolepsy by having to listen to Cheever and Goodyear.

Let me help with that:

"They're in lock step."

"These cars move at a football field per second."

"Watch him go for the overtake here."

That is something, to go from a white car to that. Truly what Indy means.

Kinda thought today's announcement would be Alfa Romeo, but instead it's the windscreen protection:




I'm interested to see how they've dealt with the visibility issues on banked ovals from that halo-like device. Edit: Looks like it's a bit higher up than the F1 implementation, which should help.

Too much pre-race fluff

NBC trying pretty hard. At least it's almost over finally.

Rossi fuel guy

AGAIN!

This is going to be a mad restart.

I don't like Team Penske, but I bet Rossi is now looking long and hard. Andretti gives him no help.

Rossi is making this such a fun race to watch.

**** these ******* commercials. Every two minutes!

Rossi needs to fire his team

Wow! Now THAT was a race.

Kashchei said:

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Rossi needs to fire his team

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Yep what could've should've

BQ92 said:

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Kashchei said:

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Rossi needs to fire his team

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Yep what could've should've

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The pit road mistakes didn't matter in the end. Rossi said it himself after the race. It was a 14 lap shootout and Pagenaud flat out beat him.

Good to see. Both indy and Charlotte were great races. And that's saying something given the issues with Nascar recently.

Monaco was whatever. Fun watching Leclerc ruin himself.

Agree. Monaco was only exciting until Leclerc eventually binned it, as expected. I turned it off about lap 38 and washed my truck instead.

Those Charlotte nascar races are becoming more and more like plate races. I guess that's what NASCAR is going for these days?

Man I disagree. I thought it was intense watching Verstappen crawl all over Hamilton's gearbox.

'03ag said:

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Man I disagree. I thought it was intense watching Verstappen crawl all over Hamilton's gearbox.

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monaco was terrible. but we knew that last year when Ricciardo was able to win even though he was 5 mph slower.

Entire broadcast of the 1989 Indy 500

Just watched the 30 for 30 on Janet Guthrie. Great show. Tons of old footage. I love hearing Jim McKay on that stuff.

The Marco jokes write themselves, at this point. (Detroit GP paint scheme).

This is great, just as long as it is nothing like the Richmond 2009 race and more like the Iowa Speedway races.

Lots of unrealized potential at that track. I hope it works out.

Rossi just nipped by Penske again. ****er's. I really don't like Newgarden.

Rossi SUPER unlucky with yellows this year...

This championship battle is shaping up to be a good one, though. Rossi is just 33 points back now.

https://www.motorsport.com/indycar/news/andretti-drivers-angry-race-control/4415813/

From the first article:

Quote:

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However, with IndyCar opening the pits so quickly after the caution flew, the early stoppers gained nothing except for Newgarden who vaulted into a lead he would never lose.

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From the second article which interviewed Dixon:

Quote:

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"I think we were better earlier in the run, and I think Josef got truly lucky with that yellow coming out just as he's pitting. I think both Rossi and I would have cleared him in a normal pitstop sequence when we all switched to slicks."

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And about the crappy broadcasting and timed race:

Quote:

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"Plus with such a short race which I don't know why they bothered with because we still fell outside NBC's [broadcast] window and went to CNBC, right? it becomes a sprint, and you can't get smart with strategy. Personally I think it should have gone full length not that it would have made any difference to me, obviously!"

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And guess who's sitting on the pole today...?