The top drivers in the Indy 500 field spent Sunday testing their cars in traffic on the track and preparing for next Sunday's race.
katherine Legge of Britain is congratulated after making the field for the Indianapolis 500.INDIANAPOLIS -- The numbers pretty much said it all the final day of qualifying for the 97th Indianapolis 500. There were nine drivers in line and nine spots to fill on the 33-car grid. So there was not much drama to that.
But the residue was a long afternoon with perhaps the most aggressive practice this month. Packs of up to a dozen drivers grouped together to learn how their machines behaved in traffic on an increasingly slick Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Passing in traffic, racing three abreast and dicing their way through backmarkers was a big part of what all the major race teams and drivers went through for much of a sun-splashed Sunday afternoon. That included the Roger Penske trio with pole-sitter Ryan Briscoe, and the five-car Michael Andretti team which includes cars starting second, third and fourth on the grid.
"I think we have the winner in our stable," Andretti said, after the long day. "I just don't know which one."
The final nine on the qualifying list included Oriol Servia, who crashed Saturday while attempting a run for the Panther/Dreyer & Reinbold team co-owned by Lakewood's Robbi Buhl. While the mishap looked devastating considering the limited equipment available to anyone for repairs, Buhl said his team came out lucky.
"It looked a lot worse than it was, probably," he said. "The guys had the car back together by 11 p.m. (Saturday night) and we were out of here. I would have to say we were pretty lucky, all things considered. The gearbox held up, it's the same gearbox. All is pretty good."
Servia ultimately qualified outside of the ninth row, 27th on the grid, at 222.393 mph.
"We just wanted to make sure we had a solid effort to get it into the race," Servia said. "It's a big relief. There was not much to gain and a lot to lose if something went wrong today.
"Now, we just work on the race car. This race has been won from the back many times. If you have a good car, you can definitely go forward."
Then there was Katherine Legge, driving for Jay Penske, son of Shaker Heights native Roger Penske, and her teammate, Sebastian Bourdais. Like Panther/Dreyer & Reinbold, Both teams came to Indy racing under Lotus power, before making the switch on Friday to Chevrolet.
Bourdais, a four-time champion in the former Champ Car Series, likely could have been a pole-day contender with more seat time in the Chevrolet. He posted a qualifying lap of 223.684 mph - 15th fastest - which would have landed him on the outside of Row 5 had he qualified Saturday. And that was with less than 24 hours of practice. Legge, a rookie, was equally impressive with a qualifying run of 221.624 mph.
Bourdais officially will start on the inside of row nine, 25th on the grid.
"That was a good run," Bourdais said after posting the fastest qualifying effort of the day. "I just wish it had been yesterday and we'd be quite a bit higher up on the grid."
Legge, the young Brit who began her career racing for Chardon-based Polestar, said making her first Indy 500 was a big exhale moment.
"It's definitely a massive relief after the week or two we have had," she said. "I finished my rookie orientation on Fast Friday, and we haven't had any real testing time, so it's been difficult. But we're here, and we've made the best of it."
Jean Alesi gives a thumbs up after qualifying for the Indianapolis 500, but his car is a relative slowpoke with the slowest qualifying speed since 1997.Speed bump
: There was no bumping on 'Bump Day' which meant the final two Lotus-powered cars, driven by Simona di Silvestro and Jean Alesi, both made the field. But Alesi's qualifying speed, 210.094 mph, was the slowest for a qualified car at Indy since 1997 when Fermin Velez qualified at 206.512 mph.More importantly, Alesi is more than 11 mph slower than the car in front of him on the grid. Di Silvestro is beside him, more than 4 mph faster at 214.393 mph, but still well off the pace of the Chevrolets and Hondas. And she is well aware of it.
"We just have to find a little more power, and then we should be OK," she said. "We're pretty down on horsepower now with our engine, but we have made improvements. At the beginning of the season we knew it was going to be difficult. Hopefully, toward the end of the season, we're going to be really competitive."
That's the long view, but the race is a week away, and finding 1 mph extra would be a huge jump, much less 11. Those driving a Lotus will just try not to be a pack of mules in a thoroughbred race.
"I'll try to be as much out of the way as possible because I know when you have a fast car, it's annoying when somebody is that much slower. I just have to do my job to be quick and not try to be in the way. That's kind of our goal for the race."
If so, perhaps they wind up like Velez, who finished 10th in 1997.
