Indianapolis 500 veteran Jimmy Kite was spotted walking Gasoline Alley on Pole Day at the Brickyard, and admitted that he was hoping to pick up a chance to qualifying for the 92nd edition of the great race.
Kite made five appearances in the 500 between 1998-2005 and looked to have qualified for last year's race on the third day of qualifying, only to be knocked out of the 33 on Bump Day.
“I am just walking around like I always do on Pole Day," he said, "I won't say anything is opening up, but I will say that there's potential out there. Whether it plays out or not, I guess we'll know by six o'clock next Sunday.
"It's just a normal pole weekend for me. I never seem to have anything working, but I've got another three or four days to see if something materialises. We'll see. I don't think you're really going to see anybody pulling out second cars to run, but there's still some teams that don't have stuff totally put together. There's some of them that are still going to end up being here. You've got some of these teams that might be struggling a bit and might want to put a veteran in it and see if they can get a little more speed out of the car. There's several options.
"Next week is Bump Week, and it's a fun week. It's my exciting week, as it's normally when I clock in and see how it goes, so we'll see how it plays out. It's always good to be here and being able to say that I've run a couple of 500s. There's going to be a couple of teams struggling to find speed, and it's whether they just bite the bullet and decide not to make the show or whether they put somebody in it, myself or Alex Barron or Jaques Lazier or whoever. I've got rides here in the past getting in cars that weren't up to speed, so maybe it will play out again this year. We'll see.”
Fellow 500 veteran Roberto Moreno was also stalking Gasoline Alley on Pole Day, checking out his prospects for a ride after placing 33rd last year, on his first start at Indianapolis since 1999.
“I'm here looking and, if there is a situation that I can jump in, I will jump in in no time,” the Brazilian admitted.
Barron, meanwhile, is on the short-list at CURB/Agajanian/Beck Motorsports, which will decide shortly between the American and Roger Yasukawa as its driver for the rest of the month, according to team owner Greg Beck.
