Saturday Indy 500 Qualifying: Horrific Crash Puts Herta Near Back of Grid
Marcus Armstrong takes jarring hit in Meyer Shank Racing entry in practice but returns for two aborted shots at qualifying.
Alex Palou's fastest performance overshadowed by wrecks, rebounds, last-ditch efforts.
Graham Rahal avoids Sunday bump drama, as four others not as lucky.
Veteran NTT IndyCar Series driver Colton Herta, one of the strongest choices once again to earn the Indianapolis 500 pole position, rebounded from a violent 230-mph accident Saturday at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to claim a 10th-row berth in a back-up car.
"It's going to be probably impossible to get out [again] today. Just a terrible day for this to happen," Herta said after leaving the infield medical center. But his Andretti Global team did a Herculean job to prepare another No. 26 Gainbridge Honda. The downside of his extraordinary effort was that in claiming the 29th of 33 positions, he bumped teammate Marco Andretti.
During Sunday's nail-biting bump hour, Andretti will battle for one of the three remaining spots in the starting lineup with three others: Rinus Veekay, Marcus Armstrong, and Jacob Abel.
Armstrong's qualifying was rough and disappointing, but the Meyer Shank Racing driver also survived a disturbing early-Saturday accident. Together with his crew, Armstrong mounted a courageous, if unsuccessful, comeback, making two aborted qualifying attempts in a replacement No. 66 Sirius XM Honda cobbled together from his own car, his road/street-course car, and teammate Felix Rosenqvist's spare.
Herta's accident was the fourth in the past two days at Indianapolis and the second Saturday. Earlier in the day, Armstrong rode out a massive wreck and exited his car on his own but was taken by stretcher to the infield care center but later cleared to return to the cockpit.Those two accidents came on the heels of Kyffin Simpson's wallbanger that flipped his car over during Fast Friday practice. Simpson, of Chip Ganassi Racing, got airborne like Herta did. Simpson's No. 8 entry made hard left-side contact with the wall, then turned over in Turn 4 during practice, in an incident he called "weird" and said, "Everything about it was weird."
NASCAR champion Kyle Larson, also crashed during Fast Friday, for the second time this spring as he continues to focus on racing May 25 in both the 500 and the Cup Series' Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte.
Herta said he saw "kind of no real signs leading to" his crash, in which his car broke loose as he powered through the first turn of his first lap. It hit the outside wall, sailed into the air, landed upside down, slid through the short chute between Turns 1 and 2, and slammed into the wall there. It was especially frightening, because the top of the car and driver's compartment bore the brunt as it screeched along the barrier. The safety team turned the car right-side-up, and Herta walked to the ambulance.
After leaving the infield hospital, Herta said, "I'm fine. Luckily, these crashes look a lot scarier than they feel - not to say that that one felt good. We were super-happy with the car this morning." He said the car got "just loose. Couldn't even get Lap 1 done. It sucks, but I'm good. We'll keep going.'
Graham Rahal, whose emotional reaction to being bumped last season lingers in fans' minds, avoided Sunday's bump drama. He and is No. 15 United Rentals Honda held onto the No. 30 position – the final locked-in spot – as several drivers ran out the day's time clock.
Conor Daly took the last laps of Saturday, pushing to improve his time and break into the Top 12 who will be pole-eligible come Sunday's field-setting activity. Daly barely missed making the
'Deserving Dozen' and said his Juncos Hollinger team 'deserves to be in the fast 12. I made the mistake of trying to push too much. It was a long day – goodness gracious. I'm really happy for Graham making it. I know he had a stressful day.'
Battling Sunday for a chance to make the Fast Six shootout and a starting position in the first two rows on Race Day will be Alex Palou, Saturday's fastest, as well as Scott McLaughlin, Josef Newgarden, Pato O'Ward, Scott Dixon, Robert Shwartzman, David Malukas, Felix Rosenqvist, Takuma Sato, Will Power, Marcus Ericsson, and Christian Lundgaard.
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Chicago Tribune
2 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Column: An impromptu thank-you speech from Pete Crow-Armstrong brings a ballpark community closer
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3 hours ago
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Indianapolis Star
4 hours ago
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Alex Palou claims Mid-Ohio pole, as others stare at championship that could 'start drifting very fast'
LEXINGTON, Ohio — Despite a 93-point gap to the two-time defending series champion and runaway title leader at the 2025 IndyCar season's halfway point, Kyle Kirkwood came to Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course still feeling he was in the game. But the driver sitting second in points through nine races and the other driver in the paddock to win this year not named Alex Palou knew on Friday ahead of the weekend-opening practice that the clock was beginning to tick on whittling down the deficit to the Chip Ganassi Racing driver. Though he said it's not yet time in the title fight to dictate his team's in-race strategy on what Palou isn't doing, finishing ahead of the driver who's won six times already through nine races this year is becoming paramount to maintaining any hope in the race for the Astor Cup. More than ever, it's about execution and maximizing speed and tracks where Andretti Global has it in spades. 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And yet, in the wake of his experience a year ago, where Arrow McLaren's Pato O'Ward started alongside Palou on the front row and watched on as the race's polesitter opened up a six-second lead in the first stint, only to be able to eat up virtually all that deficit in the second stint and then jump Palou in the final pit exchange, Palou said Saturday his starting spot isn't nearly as important as the overall performance of the car he'll wield. 'It's one of those tracks where you think it's huge (to get pole), and it's a very, very big advantage, but it's not one of the most. For sure it's good, but I think a fast car or a fast pace, car and driver, is more beneficial,' he said. 'The other years, I've never started on pole, and we were still able to make it on pace. 'I like where we start for sure, but I know it's just going to make it easier the first lap, hopefully.' Pit lane skirmish: Breaking down Will Power's exchange with Alex Palou during IndyCar at Mid-Ohio practice Palou leads IndyCar in average starting position (4.2 after his pole Saturday) by more than two spots (Colton Herta is closest at 6.8). As so often has been the case this year, the IndyCar points leader will start Sunday with a multi-row gap to all his closest championship challengers, with Kirkwood narrowly missing out on a Fast Six appearance and settling for seventh and O'Ward (third in the championship, starting 15th Sunday), Felix Rosenqvist (fourth; 16th) and Scott Dixon (fifth; ninth) a ways further back. 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Add in a pair of unexpected second-year drivers making their first (Kyffin Simpson) or second (Nolan Siegel) Fast Six appearances in their careers, and the combination of veterans trying to work their way up and young guys attempting to hold them back could make for some fireworks and perhaps some surprise results after the checkered flag falls. In that sense, at least, Palou being able to start ahead of the fray could be a saving grace, he said. 'Racing at the front is kinda a different animal,' Lundgaard said. 'As soon as you're starting to check out, it's the small details that matter. Some of the (younger drivers) haven't been exposed to that in the past, and that's why I think you see the veterans always kind of making their way forward in the race, even if they're having a bad qualifying.' Insider: Buckle up, IndyCar's silly season revolves around wily veteran Will Power. What we're hearing O'Ward, who sits 111 points back of Palou at third in the championship entering this weekend, said Friday he knows a track like Mid-Ohio that he counts as one of his best is pivotal to his title hopes, knowing that tracks like Toronto, Laguna Seca and Portland — all where he's yet to stand on a podium — loom ominously in the distance. 'We had pretty sporadic wins last year and are yet to have one this year, so this month is going to be huge with the championship,' O'Ward said. 'There's only three more races after this month, so this will be a big tell. If Palou wins another two (races) this month, they should just give him the championship. 'There's some challenging tracks coming up for us and some good ones as well, so if we can somehow find a way to get on the winning train here, I think it could be pretty big for our championship. But if (Palou) keeps finishing on the podium every race, those chances will start drifting very fast.'
