Crash Day on Pole Day – Trackside at Indy 2012
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Bryan Clauson makes contact during a qualification attempt.
Indianapolis has been blessed with beautiful sunshine since the track opened for practice a week ago, a rare May when not one minute was lost to rain. Drivers ran and ran. There was only one spin, by rookie Josef Newgarden, and his Honda-powered Dallara sustained minor damage.
Josef Newgarden spins during practice
The conditions were sunny and hot for Saturday’s Pole Day, but on the most famous 2.5-miles of asphalt-paved brick in the world, veterans Ed Carpenter and Oriol Servia and rookie Bryan Clauson crashed hard during their qualifying attempts. They were unhurt, but their Dallaras needed major rebuilding jobs before Sunday’s second and final qualifying session.
There are technical reasons for the crashes, but it also illustrates that even with the minimum of 33 cars expected to make qualifying attempts, the desire to start as close to the front as possible pushes the drivers and cars to their limit. In the cases of Carpenter, Servia and Clauson, they went beyond their limit.
Oriol Servia.
IndyCar gave the new turbocharged 2.2-liter engines 40 to 50 more horsepower for Fast Friday practice and qualifying to boost up the speed when the cars run by themselves for four laps. The DW12 runs fast in the draft and Marco Andretti showed how fast on Friday with a lap at 227.540 mph. And there were 1,206 laps run without an incident.
The Penske and Andretti teams trimmed out their cars aerodynamically to the optimum level that allowed them to maintain balance for four laps. Chevrolet got it right, too, clearly stronger than rival Honda. And with front line drivers, the Penske and Andretti teams took the top six spots in qualifying. Penske’s Ryan Briscoe put it on the pole at 226.484 mph and Andretti teammates James Hinchcliffe and Ryan Hunter-Reay were both over 226 mph.
Ed Carpenter.
That’s moving pretty well on your own with an estimated 610 horsepower. The DW12 may create a big draft, but it can get through the air on its own, too. The clean running of practice may have had some believing the cars are easy to drive and the crashes should convince the doubters that they aren’t. The DW12 may look different with the body piece protecting the rear wheels, but they’re built with a new safety enhancement.
Bryan Clauson loses it coming out of Turn 1.
Carpenter has driving in eight Indy 500s and finished fifth in 2008. He’s taken on the dual role of owner, but has hired the respected Derrick Walker to run his team. Carpenter doesn’t have a teammate or share information with another team and that’s an informational challenge. He’s the only driver in that position. Carpenter put in a qualification run at 220.377 mph that was too slow to make the top 24 on Pole Day and crashed on his second attempt.
“This car has been really inconsistent today,” he said. “It was slow and inconsistent in my first qualifying run. It was loose and sliding around. We made some changes and it was pushing in the practice before the second qualifying attempt. Then the thing got loose again, so I really don’t know where we are on our setups. We have had difficulty figuring out this new car.
Bryan Clauson’s car loaded on the flatbed.
“It’s a strange car to get just right. I was trying to qualify for the Indy 500, so I wasn’t going to lift. I’ll do the same thing tomorrow to make this race. If I crash another car, then I crash another car. It’s just very frustrating for me right now.” Servia is driving for the Dreyer & Reinbold/Panther partnership. He’s been in three Indy 500s and finished sixth last year.
“I was a little loose in turn one on the outlap,” the Spaniard said. “Sometimes on the outlap the tires are still not there. My teammate JR (Hildebrand) told us his car was a little loose. We thought we adjusted it out of the car but it wasn’t enough. I really didn’t think it was going to go, but it did.”
The IMS front-stretch with the scoring pylon.
Clauson had been strong in practice and had run three laps averaging over 222 mph on his first attempt when his DW12 swapped ends and put him into the Turn One wall.
“It started off as a great run for us,” the Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing driver said. “We were set to land right where we thought we would. I got to Turn One on my final lap and it just came around. We hadn’t had any issues with stability throughout the whole run. If anything, it wasn’t turning well enough. I don’t know exactly what happened but it ended up coming around on us.”
Ryan Briscoe is the pole winner.
Carpenter, Servia and Clauson will be back out there qualifying Sunday and, without much to gain by testing the limit, their teams will probably put a safer aerodynamic setup. That’s the smart thing to do, make sure you don’t hurt the car again.
There’s an expression at Indianapolis that probably has been around since the cars first took to the track in 1909: There are those who have hit the wall at Indy and there are those who will hit the wall at Indy. The cars, tires, engines and men have changed through several generations at Indianapolis, but the desire to be fastest remains the same. And hitting the wall is part of that process.
Ryan Briscoe(1st) James Hinchcliffe (2nd) and Ryan Hunter-Reay (3rd) receiving their qualification awards.
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