Indy Qualifying
Wow. Seriously. Wow. The new format works.
Part of me misses the whole Month-Of-May build up, the tradition. But most of that was gone years ago. There are still some that miss the front engine roadsteers. We need to move on. When I first heard that the top 24 would be locked in on Pole Day and that the top 9 would then have another Race For The Pole. I thought, "NO!!!!!" But I settled down and thought for about 5 minutes and realized SOMETHING needed to change and heck if IndyCar found sponsor for this format all the better.
There was still all the drama of Pole Day. There were teams posting times. Waiting in line only to decide to keep their time and get back in line. There were teams that crashed during practice. There were teams that had a car safely in the race that decided to withdraw their time and try again. Sometimes that worked - Helio Castroneves. Sometimes it was a ticket to Sunday's Bump Day - Paul Tracy.
The Top 9 Race To The Pole was dramatic with Chip Gannasi declaring on live TV that Penske's stall tactics were "Bull shit and you know it!" Once a car is in the top 9 the team can continuously re-try for a better time without the worry of giving up the already scored fast time. This allowed Penske's pole sitting Castroneves to run absurdly slow warmup laps before his retry. This was eating up time for the other pole wanna-bes. The only rule preventing this was a mushy directive that if they were short on time and the next in line was already on the pole the pole sitter would not be allowed to retry. Huh? What is "short on time"? Why should the pole sitter be denied an attempt at a better time?
There was an obvious hole in the rules and Penske drove a truck through that hole. Don't tell me that Chip wouldn't have done the same with his drivers. In the end Penske's move didn't matter. How do we patch the hole for 2011? The pole sitter must be allowed to defend the pole by being allowed to run faster and faster just like everyone else. I would allow the current Race To The Pole rules for the first part but then for the last 30 minutes (or 15 minutes - I'm flexible) a team would have to withdraw that car's time to re-qualify. Withdrawing would mean that the car is now in 9th position, not out of the race, until a new time is posted and the car is positioned accordingly.
Bump Day provided us with some real excitement. There was a very real chance that Tony Kannan was not going to make the race. Did those crashes get in his head? Was there something wrong with the car? KV Racing's Paul Tracy was in the race - again - but continued to fall closer and closer to the bubble. Time was running out but the KV Racing took a chance and decided to withdraw PT's car. He sat in line as time for his Indy return ticked away.
There is still a lot of room to improve in IndyCar. But, Indy is back!
