Rain Puts a Crimp in Indy Qualifying

The Indianapolis 500’s “Bump Day” took on added significance when persistent showers Sunday wiped out the second of three scheduled qualifying days for the May 26 race.

Nine positions in the 33-car field remain to be filled before the bumping process can begin Sunday, and there are a number of outstanding driver-car combinations still not in the race. Forty-six cars, including backups of qualified drivers, remain eligible.

Most prominent among the outsiders is Arie Luyendyk, 500 winner in 1990 and 1997, who aborted two qualifying attempts Saturday and now has only one try left in the No. 55 G Force-Chevrolet. If he fails again Sunday, the car will be disqualified, but Luyendyk could try to make his 17th 500 in another of the Treadway-Hubbard team cars.

“Things have not been going well,” said Luyendyk, who is making the Indianapolis 500 a one-race season while holding down his main job as an analyst for ESPN Radio. “First, we had to put in an engine from Rick Treadway’s backup car after [Saturday] morning practice, and things never got any better.”

On his first attempt, Luyendyk waved off a 227 mph because “I did not want to accept a speed in that range and the car felt loose.”

Two hours later, after rookie teammate Treadway was safely in with a 228.039 speed, Luyendyk went out again.

“The car got loose on me, and I had to get out of throttle so much in [Turn] 3 that it ruined the run. I had to abort again.

“We brought the car back to the garage and put it on the setup pad and then went back out to practice. We talked about it and decided we ought to try one more time.”

In a dramatic last-ditch attempt to be a first-day qualifier, Luyendyk rolled on to the track at 5:58 p.m., two minutes before qualifying ended, but was waved off by the crew before he took the green flag.

A mistake by someone on the crew had caused a tire-pressure sensor to give a false reading that the right-front tire was low.

“We had the front-tire sensors swapped,” chief mechanic Skip Faul said. “They had the right tires on but the wrong wheels, so the sensors were not reading the correct pressures, and we thought we had a flat. When we got in [the pits] there was nothing wrong, but by that time the gun had gone off.”

How frustrating was it to have Sunday’s entire day washed out?

“It gives us another four days to get ready,” Faul said. The track will be closed today and Tuesday with practice resuming Wednesday.

Unlike NASCAR Winston Cup, where former champions get provisional starting positions if they fail to qualify, open-wheel racing has no such loophole. For instance, 1986 winner Bobby Rahal failed to qualify in 1993 and Roger Penske’s team of defending champion Al Unser Jr. and two-time champion Emerson Fittipaldi both missed in 1996.

A.J. Foyt, who has won four times as a driver and once as a car owner with Kenny Brack, has yet to put a car in this year’s race. Both of his drivers, Greg Ray and Airton Dare, pulled in after posting 225 mph laps Saturday.

It was yet another day of frustration for Ray, the 1999 Indy Racing League champion. When the season started, he was named as a teammate to Scott Sharp on the well-funded Kelley Racing team. Just a little more than week before the season opener March 2 at Homestead-Miami, Ray was replaced by Unser Jr.

Two weeks ago, Foyt chose fellow Texan Ray to drive his No. 11 Dallara-Chevrolet, replacing Chilean veteran Eliseo Salazar, who suffered a torn artery during car testing April 16 at Indianapolis.

Ray immediately became one of the prerace favorites for the pole after having had one pole and three other front-row starts since 1998. However, a postqualifying inspection found a front shock had failed on Ray’s attempt Saturday.

Another high-profile entry from CART, Team Green’s Paul Tracy and Dario Franchitti, is not among the 24 qualifiers. Nor is Formula One veteran Johnny Herbert, who may face a conflict because he is scheduled to drive Sunday for Champion Racing in the American Le Mans Series event at Sears Point Raceway in Sonoma, Calif.

“I want to do Sears Point because I want to do it for Champion and for myself, but obviously I want to do it here too,” said the Hebert, a three-time Formula One winner who won this year’s 12 Hours of Sebring for Audi in the ALMS series. “I don’t want someone else to get in the car and qualify, because then you’ll have people saying, ‘He’s got someone else to qualify and then he gets back in it to race.’ I want to prove the point that I can do it, for one. The only way I can do that is to do it, so I’ve got to work out the scenario to do both.”

Also still hoping to catch a break are the two minority-owned teams from Southern California, 310 Racing’s George Mack of Inglewood and Latrell Sprewell Racing’s John de Vries of Newport Beach. Each made one attempt Saturday, but De Vries was waved off before taking the green flag, and Mack called his run off after two laps in the 224-mph range.

“We have kind of reached a plateau, and we’re looking for a little bit more,” said Mack, who is hoping to become the second African American driver in the 500. Willy T. Ribbs raced in 1991 and 1993.