“My guys did a great job putting the car out. They've been working hard, haven't slept in the last two days and, today, we wheeled out a car that's pretty solid. The changes we made made a lot of sense. There is a lot of trimming left, as we went out with a lot of downforce. We were not focusing on a track record here, just on the bottom two rows where bumping takes place.”
Foyt was the first driver out when the qualifying line opened at noon, and recorded a four-lap average of 219.184mph to make the show. With those that followed unable to match his mark, he was never in danger of being bumped, leaving the drama to others. The fact that he crashed in practice after making the field and would not have been able to requalify kept him on his toes, however.
"It feels good to get in," the Vision Racing pilot admitted, "It was very frustrating, the last 24 hours, but that is the way it works around here. I was just glad to get out there and put four laps in. I have always had exciting qualifying runs around here, but I just put four laps in the books."
Lazier earned a $50,000 bonus from Firestone for being the final driver to qualify for the 500, and would have earned his spot even if Dominguez's last-gasp effort had not ended in the wall. The Mexican, however, was numb - not from the effects of his shunt, but from failing to make the field with his Pacific Coast Motorsports Dallara.
"It's not possible [to describe how I feel]," he confessed, "I feel terrible for me, for my sponsors, for the team. The only thing that makes me feel good is that we tried until the end. We tried as hard as we could, and that's the only thing that makes me feel good. We gave it our best effort. At the end, we just trimmed the car out, and it didn't take that downforce. I just lost it.”
Yasukawa, meanwhile, blamed a shift in wind direction for his failure to post a qualifying speed on his last two attempts, both of which came up short.
![Mario Dominguez - Pacific Coast Motorsports [pic credit: IRL/McQueeney]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/436611.jpg)
