Oilpressure

After a very disjointed week of practice due to weather, Fast Friday promises to be just as disjointed. Tuesday’s practice started at 9:00 am, and lasted for 26 minutes before it was halted by rain. Not another lap was turned for the rest of the day.

It was more of the same on Wednesday. It was still pouring at the re-scheduled start time of 10:00 am. It wasn’t until 3:05 pm that the first wheel turned. Teams got in about three hours and fifteen minutes before the rains returned – ending practice before the extended 7:00 pm checkered flag.

Thursday dawned with sunny skies and no threat of rain. There was another early start (10:00 am) and it looked like a full eight-hour day was in store for everyone. Unfortunately, more than an hour was lost to rain, before running resumed at around 5:35 pm

The top speed of the month belongs to Scott McLaughlin, who turned a 229.493 mph lap on Wednesday.

The weather does not look great for today, either. It is predicted to be fine until around 2:00 pm, when some storms are supposed to push through the area. The forecast for Saturday and Sunday looks good for now.

Today is Fast Friday, the day the cars are given extra boost by IndyCar. The extra boost will be for Fast Friday and both days of qualifying. I’ve never cared for the concept of extra boost for qualifying. It always seemed contrived as they are trying to manufacture drama for artificially enhanced speeds. But believe it or not – they didn’t ask me my opinion.

It’s hard to come to any conclusion what will happen this weekend. The practices have been so disjointed, there aren’t many trends to pick up on. Keep in mind, not only will everyone be watching who will be in the Firestone Fast Twelve and ultimately the pole; but there is also the question of who is going to go home.

Some had suggested it might be Katherine Legge, since she hasn’t been in an Indy car since last year’s race. But she improved from thirty-first on Wednesday to twenty-fourth on Thursday. If I had to guess who might miss the 108th Running of the Indianapolis 500, I would say it’s going to be Sting Ray Robb. He only had the thirtieth quickest time on Wednesday, and was thirty-fourth on Thursday. That would be a financial blow to AJ Foyt Racing, if he can’t make the field.

But it seems more times than not, the car(s) you think might be going home makes it, while a front-runner doesn’t. Fernando Alonso, James Hinchcliffe and Graham Rahal are just the most recent examples.

Needless to say, this should be an interesting three days coming up.

Aside from today’s regular Noon to 6:00 coverage, Saturday’s coverage on Peacock will begin at 8:30 am EDT for the hour of practice. Then qualifying will run on Peacock from 11:00 am to 6:00 pm EDT, Sunday’s coverage will start out on Peacock from Noon to 2:00 pm EDT, before switching to Big NBC at 3:00 pm and will run until the gun goes off at 6:00 pm. Then the final Monday practice with the full field will run from 1:00 to 3:00 pm EDT.

Susan arrived in town very late last night (technically this morning), later than expected because of (you guessed it) weather. We will (hopefully) be at the track fairly early today. I was hoping they might start at 10:00, but as I type this, that is not the case. We will be posting from the track all through the weekend. Please check back periodically all through qualifying. It should be an interesting weekend.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on May 17, 2024 at 4:03 am and is filed under Indianapolis 500. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.