Doyel: Would the fastest race in Indianapolis 500 history hurry up and get here?
INDIANAPOLIS – Other drivers are watching Scott Dixon speed around the racetrack on Sunday night, and they’re just laughing, because this is silly. It’s silly what Dixon has just done to win the pole of the 2022 Indianapolis 500 – he’s the fastest Indy 500 pole winner ever … think about that – and it’s silly what other drivers have been doing on this day, this week, this month.
Alex Palou was staring at winning the pole before Dixon’s Fast Six qualifying run – the final run of the day – but even he’s laughing as Dixon roars around the track at nearly 235 mph on his first lap, putting him on a clear path to bump Palou into the second spot.
This is pure silliness, and Ed Carpenter is watching with a bemused look on his face as well. Carpenter knows speed. He’s the hometown guy, the oval expert, the Indy 500 qualifying savant who was the last person to win back-to-back poles (in 2013 and ’14) before Dixon achieved the trick last year and this one.
Indy 500 qualifying results: Scott Dixon scores fifth career Indy 500 pole
Very few drivers in IndyCar history have been faster on this track than Carpenter was this week, when he posted the eighth-fastest practice lap in Indy 500 history at 234.410 mph, and he wasn’t even the fastest driver of the week. Dixon set the pole record Sunday, obviously, and on Saturday youngsters Rinus VeeKay and Pato O’Ward had posted two of the five fastest four-lap qualifying speeds in track history.
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Most years, none of this would mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of things. Do you know who won the pole in 2020 or ‘19? Not me, because it doesn’t really matter. It matters to the drivers of course, because they get IndyCar series points and a nice check and bragging rights on the rest of the paddock. For the rest of us? It’s something to talk about until the actual race begins, and then we move on.
Even Scott Dixon was downplaying what happened Sunday, saying: “Poles are fantastic, and it is a privilege, but everyone wants to win.”
Yes, true, but let’s not move on yet from what has happened – what is happening – during the buildup to the 106th Indianapolis 500.
History is happening, but it’s better than that. Speed is happening. Everyone’s waited decades for this moment. Damn, it got here fast.
Even the tires are trembling
The tires are trembling on the track.
Indy cars are built to go fast, obviously, but engineers and crews and drivers are pushing the envelope this week. On NBC, which was showing the Fast Six on Sunday, they were highlighting the tires trembling as these cars reached speeds of 242 during the Fast Six.
Conor Daly actually got his car to go faster, hitting what they call a “trap speed” at 243 mph at the end of the back straightaway, and he didn’t even qualify for the final 12. Daly, another hometown driver, will start the race in the sixth row, though he’s earned some bragging rights of his own:
In the fastest week in Indy 500 history, Daly reached the fastest recorded speed at any point in time, along the way proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that IndyCar is the fastest racing series in the world. Top Fuel dragsters go faster, for sure, but they’re not racing each other in real time, or turning corners at all. They’re just going straight until the parachute opens and they roll to a stop.
IndyCar has the fastest cars in the world, and this has been its fastest week ever, and all of it bodes so beautifully well for what is shaping up to be a spectacular day of racing Sunday. The weather has been wonderful, and the forecast for race day is clear skies, albeit slightly warmer temperatures in the upper 80s.
With temperatures blessedly cool this week, crowds have been robust for practices, and advance ticket sales for Sunday are huge. The race probably won’t sell out as it did for that historic 100th running in 2016, not with Indianapolis Motor Speedway holding damn near half a million people, but the crowd Sunday probably will be as large as it had been for any of the first 99.
Something special is happening this week at IMS, something historic and fast, though we’re still seeing some of the usual stuff. An Andretti is getting a raw deal again, with Takuma Sato getting in Marco Andretti’s way on Marco’s first qualifying run Saturday, causing him to waive it off and try again. Andretti didn’t reach the final 12; he’ll start in the eighth row. And he’s irritated.
As for Sato, he’s the same guy he’s ever been, which is to say: dangerous. Hey, more than any race in the world, the Indy 500 rewards daring, and Sato won the Indy 500 in 2017 and 2020. But his racing style isn’t terribly popular in the paddock, with drivers noting drily that he wears a boxing mouthguard because he’s anticipating trouble, and Sato found some more trouble on Saturday:
He smacked into the wall during his qualifying run, but Sato being Sato, he was going so fast he still qualified for the final 12 on Sunday; he’ll start in Row 4 in what is shaping up to be the fastest Indy 500 in history.
Scott Dixon’s hands are trembling too!
You need to understand why all this speed is happening, and here’s what I can tell you:
Nobody knows, beyond the beautiful weather and perhaps the latest sealant on the track.
Every year at the Indy 500 teams are searching for that extra little bit of speed, because the margin between winning and not even reaching the podium is so incredibly small. Put it this way: Before he posted the fastest pole-winning time in Indy 500 history, Scott Dixon also posted the fastest time during the first of two qualifying stages Sunday, for the 12 fastest cars from Saturday’s qualifying. Tony Kanaan posted the sixth-fastest time in the early session Sunday, making him the last car in the Fast Six.
The difference from Dixon in first to Kanaan in sixth: Three-tenths of a second over the course of 10 miles and nearly 2½ minutes.
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So these teams are always seeking speed, but some years are faster than others. This year, the weather has been accommodating. That’s one reason for the speed. As for where all this speed has come from in general, you need to go back to 1996, when Arie Luyendyk posted a four-lap speed of 236.986, a record, but didn’t win the pole because he’d failed an inspection previously. After that year, when the front row of the 1996 Indy 500 posted the fastest average speed in race history – pole winner Tony Stewart, Davy Jones and Eliseo Salazar posted an average qualifying speed of 233.233 – IndyCar banned turbochargers. Speed plummeted nearly 15 mph.
Turbochargers were brought back in 2012, and speeds have been creeping back into the 230s, but nothing like this. This year’s front row of Dixon, Alex Palou and VeeKay went faster than Row 1 of 1996 (233.643 mph).
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Dixon’s hands were shaking after his first qualifying run Sunday, when the field was whittled from 12 to the Fast Six. As he was waiting to go out for his second run on Sunday, for the Fast Six, two women standing near his pit box were talking to each other about the danger level of what Dixon was about to attempt.
“His poor wife,” one of them says to the other.
And then what do you know? There she is. Emma Dixon has come bounding down the track to her husband’s pit box to wish him luck on his Fast Six attempt. Dixon walks out of the engineer tent to give her a kiss, and she doesn’t want to let him go. She’s hugging him and holding him and I’m watching this and now I’m thinking: His poor wife.
Dixon’s nickname is “The Ice Man” for a reason, though. Unlike most drivers who advanced from the final 12 to the Fast Six, spending that half-hour or so resting in their cars – Ed Carpenter was studying his iPhone in his No. 33 Chevrolet – Dixon hopped out of his car to visit his engineer’s tent.
Dixon was standing there with his right knee bent, his right foot propped up on a toe, like a man waiting for a ride. And he was, I guess: He was waiting to make the fastest pole ride in the fastest event in the fastest racecar series in the world.
Now we wait a week, which won’t be easy. Couldn’t the 106th Indianapolis 500 please be like everyone else at IMS, and hurry up and get here?
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