Pole day or Final Qualfying and drama at Indy.

Pole day for the 100th Indy 500.

The massive Sunday crowd

What a difference a day makes as they say.

Clear skies returned to the town of Speedway on Sunday and the warmth as well.  Today marked the day of the final sorting of the gird for next weekends race and the 100th Indy 500. Another day with another great crowd and again numbers not seen at the track on a day like this in recent years. A great attraction was the addition of many of the pace cars from over the years on display today and the history alone in these cars was amazing to see and ponder the development of the car over the years.

The morning provided another practice run for everyone and the only drama to come from that was the news that shortly after the season finshed the call was made to do an engine change on the Scott Dixon Car. There was an error in the data download on the engine that raises concern so the call was made to change it out. A rapid job by the team enabled this to happen and happen with time to spare. DIxon had been fifth fastest in the morning practice so was showing good speed once again in the warmer day. An overnight rebuild on the Max Chilton entry saw him back on track with good lap times and now locked into next weeks race.

The Ganassi team change out tub on Chiltons car

Qualfying started with the slowest to fastest plus the fast nine shoot out later in the day to come as well. Clear skies and a tempurture of 24c so a nice Sunday May afternoon.

The first drama came with the fifth car on track and the AJ Foyt entry of Alex Tagliani who spun on the start of his first of the four timed laps coming out of turn four and hitting the pit in wall. He was okay but the car was not and a bit of damage to the front of the tub is a concern and a likely tub change out will be required.

The damaged car of Tagliani

From there on in it was pretty routine as the field went about sorting out the running order for the race. 

As the afternoon went on pretty much most people slotted roughy where they had been the day before. Montoya having a few issues with a plastic rubbishy bag on tag but overall close to the day before. Then however came the top nine and the fast nine shoot out.

The air was pretty cold sun staring to go down and suddenly we had three. Newgarden taking the pole with a few runners to go and it was tension time. Oh yes tension was a rising.

Hunter Reay was fast but not quite enough, then cam Hinchcliffe was the last car out and make the  word was high drama USA v Canada a driver that was nearly lost to the sport one year ago in practice  on the Monday. Fastest yesterday and in the end fastest today. They sat out practice so to not  confuse 

themselves with the changing track conditions and they backed them selves for a good shot and they got it. A dream in many ways , perhaps a changing of the guard or history at the  500.

James Himchcliffe at Indy 2014

                 

Now attentions turn to Monday afternoons practice and the cars in race spec full tank runs, cars in packs and traffic and race set up and what will it bring. 30 of the 33 could easy win this thing it's. tight field and it will be a great race.  The crowds will be massive and hopefully the weather gods will be kind.

The feeling seems rain will hit Indy by Thursday but then again that's Thursday and Sunday is Sunday and race day as well it's going to be a classic and crowds like never before.  So in the end this is how the 10tth grid will look and is a classic line up fitting of this race.

1. (5) James Hinchcliffe, Honda, 02:36.0063 (230.760) 
2. (21) Josef Newgarden, Chevrolet, 02:36.0470 (230.700)
3. (28) Ryan Hunter-Reay, Honda, 02:36.0821 (230.648)
4. (29) Townsend Bell, Honda, 02:36.1950 (230.481) 
5. (26) Carlos Munoz, Honda, 02:36.3264 (230.287) 
6. (12) Will Power, Chevrolet, 02:36.7471 (229.669) 
7. (7) Mikhail Aleshin, Honda, 02:36.8205 (229.562) 
8. (22) Simon Pagenaud, Chevrolet, 02:37.1096 (229.139) 
9. (3) Helio Castroneves, Chevrolet, 02:37.1265 (229.115) 
10. (77) Oriol Servia, Honda, 02:37.1638 (229.060) 
11. (98) Alexander Rossi, Honda, 02:37.5679 (228.473) 
12. (14) Takuma Sato, Honda, 02:37.8747 (228.029) 
13. (9) Scott Dixon, Chevrolet, 02:37.9007 (227.991) 
14. (27) Marco Andretti, Honda, 02:37.9161 (227.969) 
15. (6) JR Hildebrand, Chevrolet, 02:37.9809 (227.876) 
16. (42) Charlie Kimball, Chevrolet, 02:38.0180 (227.822) 
17. (2) Juan Pablo Montoya, Chevrolet, 02:38.1141 (227.684) 
18. (10) Tony Kanaan, Chevrolet, 02:38.2906 (227.430) 
19. (11) Sebastien Bourdais, Chevrolet, 02:38.2919 (227.428) 
20. (20) Ed Carpenter, Chevrolet, 02:38.4325 (227.226) 
21. (19) Gabby Chaves, Honda, 02:38.4566 (227.192) 
22. (8) Max Chilton, Chevrolet, 02:38.8100 (226.686) 
23. (24) Sage Karam, Chevrolet, 02:38.9851 (226.436) 
24. (18) Conor Daly, Honda, 02:39.0721 (226.312) 
25. (63) Pippa Mann, Honda, 02:39.2877 (226.006) 
26. (15) Graham Rahal, Honda, 02:39.4002 (225.847) 
27. (61) Matt Brabham, Chevrolet, 02:39.4846 (225.727) 
28. (88) Bryan Clauson, Honda, 02:39.8111 (225.266) 
29. (16) Spencer Pigot, Honda, 02:40.1087 (224.847) 
30. (25) Stefan Wilson, Chevrolet, 02:40.2833 (224.602) 
31. (41) Jack Hawksworth, Honda, 02:40.2878 (224.596) 
32. (4) Buddy Lazier, Chevrolet, 02:42.0498 (222.154) 
33. (35) Alex Tagliani, Honda, No time (No speed)