11:00 at Indy, No Qualifying, Lots of Questions

INDIANAPOLIS (May 17, 2015) -RIS- What started as a compressed day of qualifying for the Indianapolis 500 has turned into a monumental headache for the Verizon IndyCar Series and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Shortly after 8:00 this morning, in a pre-qualifying practice session, seasoned Indy car driver Ed Carpenter's #20 Fuzzy's Vodka Chevrolet became the third Chevy in four days to spin, fly, and flip. Helio Castroneves, Josef Newgarden, and Carpenter have all had unexplained accident causes that some insist are not aerodynamically created.

When the current Indy car design was chosen in 2011, the decision was made to add "aero kits" to the chassis to both make for better brand distinction between engine suppliers' cars and to give the fans what they indicated they wanted - a visual distinction between cars to make the series less-spec.

The new Honda and Chevy aero kits were added for this season, and thus far, all races have been on either temporary street circuits or road courses - both of which use kits very different than the superspeedway kit designed for Indy, and introduced for testing at the Speedway on May 3rd.

The issue of inadequate testing time hasn't really been raised until now.

Following Carpenter's accident this morning, INDYCAR officials have gathered with team owners and manufacturers to discuss what is clearly a safety issue for both competitors and fans.

A crowd has built in the garage area around the INDYCAR officials' transporter, awaiting word about that changes, if any, will be made to allow qualifying for next Sunday's running of the 99th Indianapolis 500 to take place today, as scheduled.

As scheduled, qualifying is woefully behind schedule. The firm television window is between 1:00-3:00 Eastern on ABC, and there's no opportunity to shift at this point. IndyCar had hoped to have the total field qualifying done by Noon, allowing the Fast Nine battle for the pole position to take place during the network TV window.

Right now, it doesn't appear like that will take place.

It's a race track, so rumors fly fast and free. Some speculate that IndyCar would let the cars qualifying with the current aero set-ups, and then test newer aero bits later in the week. Some speculate that qualifying may be put on hold until the aerodynamic questions are thoroughly explored and answered.

President of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway had this to say to the thousands of fans still patiently waiting at the Speedway: "We're in conversations now with both Chevy and Honda and the race teams to get some input. The first thing that's most important is safety.

"It's going to depend on what the manufacturers, the teams, and IndyCar decide to do with the cars. If they decide to make some changes to the cars it might help. Right now, we don't know exactly what's causing the accidents. If they think of things they can do that might make these matters less likely to happen, it really would be a matter of what kind of changes need to be made."

Boles, himself, speculated on what's next.

"Whatever they do to the cars," he said, "especially if they make a subtle change, they'll probably give the teams an opportunity to do some testing.

"We apologize for the delay. We're all here to see race cars go fast. We want to make sure, at the end of the day, they're safe."

The unfortunate side-effect is that this is a public relations nightmare for IndyCar and the Speedway, and is giving those pundits who swore the crash issue wasn't due to aero packages reason to rethink their confidence.

RIS will bring you the update on Indianapolis 500 qualifying as soon as decisions are made.

Tom Beeler

Tom has been a contributor to RIS since 1992. He was invited to join the staff as a full-time reporter/editor in 1995, and has covered IndyCar, Formula 1, NASCAR, Grand-Am, ALMS and the 24 Hours of Le Mans. In addition to his RIS work, Tom has been a contributor for General Motors, Nissan, Toyota and the ACO.

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Volume 2015, Issue 5, Posted 11:29 AM, 05.17.2015