Nobody could argue that the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s new qualifying system didn’t bring some excitement and intrigue to Pole Day at the Speedway last Saturday.
Amid perfect mid-May weather, a battle of wits played out over the afternoon as the top drivers and teams gambled on scratching their earlier qualifying runs in favour of making re-engineered eleventh-hour second or third attempts at the end of a long day.
By the middle the session, a reasonable little crowd - more than in recent years - had gathered in the grandstands as Sam Hornish, Tony Kanaan and Helio Castroneves challenged Dario Franchitti’s four-lap pole speed from earlier in the day. In the end, Castroneves took the pole after Kanaan and Hornish came close but failed, making the point that, however much the race may have lost its lustre, the fiendish challenge of mastering the Speedway remains the same.
“The challenge here all comes because you’re so close to the edge in the car,” Franchitti commented, “After finishing Pole Day, that’s even more prevalent in my mind but, every time you step in the car here, you are on the edge. The weather conditions change and the balance changes. You’re never going to have a perfect car here because you’re always fighting at least one little thing. At the same time, you might think you’re not in with a shout and the conditions change and all of a sudden your car is the one to have.”
The IMS’ unique four-cornered layout and the many hours of track time available for practice are the key components in defining the Speedway’s special challenge.
“I think it’s about the nature of the corners and the shape of the track,” Franchitti observed, “It has big, long straights and four ninety-degree corners with not really much banking. There really isn’t another track like it.”
Franchitti recalled his first experience at the track, back in the Team Kool Green days with Paul Tracy.
“I always felt, before I came here, that the stories about how difficult the place is were old wives’ tales,” he remarked, “The first time I ran here was when Paul and I came here for a test in April 2002. It was pretty cold and we went out and ran pretty quick straight off and I remember thinking what's the problem here?’ But then we came back a few weeks later and it was twenty degrees warmer and windy and I was in a world of trouble. So you’ve got to respect this place. If I’ve learned anything, I’ve learned that.
