Indy 500 Qualifying Is Terrifying and Magical

Get up close to the fence during Indy 500 qualifying, and you’ll witness something that you simply can’t anywhere else: an open-wheel race car diving into a turn at 240 mph. You can watch this on TV, you can watch it from your grandstand seat, but nothing will reveal the magic of Indy 500 qualifying like watching it with your face pressed against the fence. Or, in my particular case, the infield wall dividing the pit lane from the race track.

It sounds obvious, but it’s not until you witness it and sort of do the math that you truly understand the physics at play, and the bravery of the men and women behind the wheel. A four-wheeled machine is traveling on a paved surface at a speed much higher than an Airbus A380 needs to take off. Its bodywork is designed to help it stick to the ground rather than go airborne, though at Indy, the superspeedway rear wings are mostly for show. They’re basically flat.

In the case of this year’s pole-sitter Alex Palou, his 850-hp Honda hybrid engine is banging against the 12,000-rpm limiter as he negotiates every inch of the 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway with the precision of a brain surgeon. Just watch his hands in the video below; they make tiny but decisive movements and use his tools to make minor tweaks to the car. Looking at him from up close—at least for the brief moment I could see him rocket down the main straight at 242 mph and dive into Turn 1 at 240—is like witnessing Superman thread skyscrapers while using his shoulders to change direction.

His red-and-yellow race car looks like a missile crossing the famous yard of bricks, and there’s a split-second when Palou begins to gently turn left into Turn 1, but not before lightly careening up to the wall, that it almost appears as if the car is hovering over the tarmac. It’s hard to comprehend how something that’s not an aircraft can cover 352 feet per second and still be under control. At 240 mph, you’re covering 1.17 football fields per second. A top-fuel dragster is quicker and faster, but only for a couple of seconds and only on a straight line.

Yet Palou was always in control, despite wind gusts so strong that I could barely capture a stable video clip on my phone of his final quali run. If you’re able to tune out the noise from the fans, the announcer, and whatever else is around you, and just focus on the car circling the oval, you begin to grasp what makes qualifying at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway so damn special. It’s always nerve-wracking, but this year was even more so.

Typically, qualifying for the Indy 500 takes two days. On the first day, all 33 cars will make their first runs, and some drivers can run again if they’re unhappy with their performance. At the end of Day 1, the top portion of the field moves on to Day 2 while the rest are locked into position. Because heavy rain wrote off the first day of qualifying, all of this had to be done on Sunday, with a few adjustments: all 33 cars would get only one shot, with the top 12 moving to a second qualifying run, and then the top six to a final third run. This meant no do-overs. If you were unhappy with grip conditions, wind, tire temperatures, or engine performance on your very first run, you just had to deal with it. Even some of the most experienced racers, like two-time winner Takuma Sato, got caught off guard and only managed 13th on the starting grid. Four-time winner Helio Castroneves came in 16th. There were seven Indy 500 winners who couldn’t even clear the top 10.

Despite strong performances by Felix Rosenqvist (Honda) and Alex Rossi (Chevrolet), it was last year’s winner, Palou, who dominated at the Brickyard. Even more worrisome for his opponents, the Spaniard made it look easy, with no close calls or funny moments as he rocketed around the oval.

I’ve witnessed the Indy 500 over a dozen times, and the morning of the race has always been my favorite moment of the year. Now, I’m beginning to feel like seeing a lone driver be on maximum attack for four straight laps might be the best part of the Indy 500 festivities. Well, and the Wienermobiles’ “Wiene 500” on Carb Day, of course.

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