Although there are still two more IndyCar races to go, Many eyes are already on the Indianapolis 500 race., after the open test last week and half a month before the start of official training. On Wednesday night, those responsible for the oval announced that the special classification system of the Indy 500, which covers the weekend before the race, will receive a new modification in this year’s editionsignaling the end of the ‘Fast Nine’ format used for the last 12 years in Indianapolis.
Starting this year, the number of drivers progressing on Saturday 21 May to the pole fight on Sunday 22 increases from nine to twelve competitors. In turn, instead of fighting on Sunday in a single round as before, they will do so in two rounds, advancing the top six from the first to the final ‘Fast Six’. In the two rounds on Sunday, each driver will have a single four-lap attempt, in reverse order of their previous result. This format follows the same scheme that has been used in IndyCar circuit racing since 2008, in the style of the Q1-Q2-Q3 system of Formula 1which was adapted to a Fast Six that had already existed in IndyCar since 2005.
The classification format, explained schematically.
Saturday’s first phase remains unchanged: Competitors will take to the track in an order determined by lottery to complete a solo four-lap attempt. Once completed, everyone will have free rein to try to improve their time for the duration of the session, either by eliminating their previous time in exchange for going out on the fast lane of the pit lane, or keeping it, with the risk of having to queue down the street. slow. At the end of it, positions from 13 to 30 will be definitive for the gridand so will positions 31 to 33 if only 33 competitors show up, as is the case in this year’s edition due to various logistical problems.
In the event that a future Indy 500 has more than 33 drivers attempting to qualify, the ‘Last Row Shootout’ is also maintainedwhich would take place on the Sunday before the fight for pole position with the drivers below 30th place. Lasting one hour, the participants would have the opportunity to improve your guaranteed attempt in the limited time available, unlike 2019 in which Fernando Alonso was left out from the grill after having to play it with only one card. This already happened in 2021, which did not help the two eliminated drivers (Charlie Kimball and RC Enerson) as the cars found themselves in parc fermé and without the possibility of major setup changes.
History of qualifying at Indianapolis
The Indy 500 qualifying format has undergone several changes historically. The best known, between 1952 and 1997, involved a total of four qualifying days on two different weekends, in which the drivers who qualified on the first day started ahead of those who qualified on the second, and so on until the fourth, historically known as Bump Day. Therefore, the pole position and the first positions on the grid were decided on the first day, unless the rain prevented everyone from completing their guaranteed attempt. Nevertheless, this system had other peculiarities that made many cars wait for the second weekend.
Each entered car could only complete a single qualifying attempt, with a maximum of three opportunities to do so. Once the attempt was completed, that car could no longer qualify again. If his driver wanted to improve the time, he had to withdraw it from the event and use another car. In turn, as soon as 33 classifieds were reached, the car with the slowest time of all became in the “bubble”, regardless of the day it did so, and was eliminated (‘bump’) if another unclassified car improved its record. For all these reasons, many drivers, knowing that they would have few options to come out on top, preferred to wait to maximize their options, either to get more performance out of the car with one more week of testing or to have more optimal conditions.
Between 1998 and 2000, the format was reduced to two qualifying days in a single weekend, and between 2001 and 2004 it was brought back to the second weekend with a third final day. Since the 2005 edition, it returned to four days and ’11/11/11′ format adoptedin which each of the first three days filled eleven grid slots, reserving fourth for the Bumps. Each car went on to have three qualifying attempts per dayand both the cars already classified and those eliminated on Bump Day they could go back out to classifyas long as they had attempts available that day.
By last, in 2010 the reduction to two days brought with it the ‘Fast 9’, the final round for pole, although the way to reach it has also had different formats. Until 2013, the ‘Fast 9’ was held at the end of the Saturday and was open to three attempts per car without having to erase the time of the first (although in two of those years the rain forced a single attempt); the first 24 places were awarded that day and the final nine were open for Sunday. In 2014, the ‘Fast 9’ was moved to Sunday as the final session to a single attempt; cars outside the top 33 were eliminated on Saturday, and positions 10 to 33 were sorted out on Sunday in a redundant one-shot session prior to the fight for pole.
Finally, in 2019 it was decided remove attempt limit (Fernando Alonso and Sage Karam made five that Saturday), the session for positions 10-33 was abolished and the Last Row Shootout was established so that those eliminated could also be decided on Sunday. This caused a modification for Saturday that went unnoticed, for which cars that fell outside the top 30 wasted their time as if they had been ‘bumped’; therefore, last year, Dalton Kellett qualified 30th despite taking his time and making one worse than that of several drivers he had previously beaten … which were no longer valid.
Photos: IndyCar Media