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VeeKay surges to Barber pole...read the fine print on the shoe shine rag....

I qualified on the pole and I got this really neat shoeshine rag!

Michael Levitt/Motorsport Images
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emailBy Marshall Pruett | April 30, 2022 3:24 PM ET

Pato O’Ward was one lap away from earning his first pole of the season but Rinus VeeKay had other plans for Sunday’s Honda Indy Grand Prix at Barber Motorsports Park. The Ed Carpenter Racing driver, fastest in the morning practice session, blitzed the opposition on his final tour and put down a 1m06.2507s lap in the No. 21 Chevy to earn the second pole of his career.

O’Ward was close behind in his No. 5 Arrow McLaren SP (+0.1496s), but that’s where the trend stopped as the Dutchman left Chip Ganassi Racing’s Alex Palou (+0.0412s), Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin (+0.0552s), Andretti Autosport’s Alexander Rossi(+0.0582) and AMSP’s Felix Rosenqvist (+0.0861s) well and truly behind.

“We had a really good car but we did have some hiccups going through the first two sequences,” VeeKay said. “I was behind Romain [Grosjean]. He went through the grass in [Turn 8/9], slowed me down half a second because of all the dust going on the tires. Luckily we had the pace to advance. Still I knew we had a lot left in the tank coming to the Fast Six qualifying.”

Rossi’s Andretti team replaced the entire back end of the No. 27 Honda in the brief period between his crash in practice and the start of qualifying two hours later.

Behind VeeKay, only Juncos Hollinger Racing’s Callum Ilott stood out yet again. Continuing the theme from Friday, he earned the team’s first appearance in the Firestone Fast 12 where with his 11th in the No. 77 Chevy.

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The Firestone Fast 12 provided more dramas with a few teams waiting to the last minutes of the session to send their drivers out to set their fastest laps. Running the risk of a red flag ruining their plans, the Andretti team paid for the last-moment strategy when Ganassi’s Marcus Ericsson spun and brought out a red flag that ended the session with Colton Herta and Romain Grosjean needing one more lap to crack the Fast Six.

“I don’t understand why we waited to let the whole field go by,” an unimpressed Herta, who starts 10th, said to the team as he drove towards the pits.

Surprised to find himself knocked out in the early stages of qualifying, CGR’s Scott Dixon was not a fan of earning P13 on the starting grid.

“I didn’t expect that. Definitely bummed for the team,” he said. “It’s not a great starting position.”

Team Penske’s Will Power was thoroughly perplexed about where their speed went missing.

“It wasn’t bad. I don’t know, man,” he said, mystified after qualifying P19. “That’s a terrible place for this track.”

All three A.J. Foyt Racing drivers were clustered together in the opening qualifying round and all three were relegated to the back, with Kyle Kirkwood leading the trio in P21. Lacking speed all weekend, the Foyt team has Kirkwood, Dalton Kellett and Tatiana Calderon to try and move forward with alternate strategies on Sunday.

AS IT HAPPENED

The first round of qualifying saw half the field head out to try and run inside the top six to transfer into the next round and, once over, the fastest group was led by Scott McLaughlin, Pato O’Ward, Alex Palou, Alexander Rossi, Felix Rosenqvist and Graham Rahal. Those who would go no further were Scott Dixon, Jack Harvey, Kyle Kirkwood, Takuma Sato, Dalton Kellett, Will Power and Tatiana Calderon.

The second round for the other half of the field was led by Romain Grosjean, Colton Herta, Josef Newgarden, Rinus VeeKay, the surprising Callum Ilott and Marcus Ericsson. A late off-track excursion and contact with the wall by David Malukas brought out the red flag—Helio Castroneves spun on his own elsewhere on the same lap—and amid the adversity, those who missed the cut were Christian Lundgaard, Castroneves, Malukas, Devlin DeFrancesco, Conor Daly and Simon Pagenaud.

The move to the Fast 12 was a shocker as a last-lap spin and red flag caused by Marcus Ericsson left Colton Herta and Romain Grosjean unable to complete their final laps which should have moved them into the Fast Six. Nonetheless, those who were knocked out were Josef Newgarden in seventh, then Grosjean, Graham Rahal, Herta, Ilott and Ericsson.

The Fast Six consisted of O’Ward, McLaughlin, Rossi, Rosenqvist, VeeKay and Palou.

 

https://racer.com/2022/04/29/video-f...45f7-274228613

 

Pruett’s cooldown lap: Barber

Michael Levitt/Motorsport Images
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emailBy Marshall Pruett | May 4, 2022 1:44 PM ET

Rinus VeeKay was running away with a flag-to-flag victory until Pato O’Ward intervened with one of his patently bold moves. Callum Ilott was on target for the best finish of his young IndyCar career until a mistake soured the result. And Graham Rahal was on pace to place seventh until Romain Grosjean fell in love with the left side of his car.

The 2022 edition of the Honda Grand Prix of Alabama had its moments of excitement as O’Ward and Arrow McLaren SP broke Team Penske’s early stranglehold on the championship. One thing that didn’t break was Chevy’s noose-like grip on the season as it blanked Honda for the fourth consecutive race.

Both items — AMSP and the Bowtie — served up some great themes as we race towards Indianapolis: How will Penske respond? Does Honda have an answer for Chevy’s perfect start? Can VeeKay and Ed Carpenter Racing repeat on the Indy road course? And after going winless during the opening three months of the season, will Andretti Autosport and Chip Ganassi Racing find whatever’s been missing to end that unwanted streak?

Lots of questions to be answered in the weeks ahead.

THE RUN-THROUGH

We covered plenty of topics in standalone stories during the weekend, so before we jump into more new topics, here’s some of the other Barber content to digest:

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Rahal frustrated with Grosjean after late-race tussle

Carpenter hoping VeeKay's Barber pole leads to strong Month of May

Rossi rewards Andretti crew’s rapid work with strong qualifying

Sato finding new ways forward with Coyne

IndyCar rookie Ilott and veteran engineer Touron seeing more Friday speed at Barber

THE POWER OF PRE-EVENT TESTING

One of the more interesting aspects of how each IndyCar team plans its season is found in when and where they choose to use the four private test days. Outside of the one or two annual official open tests that have been put on by the series, the recent restrictions on private testing have made teams choose wisely on how to deploy those precious outings.

Some have chosen to front-load the calendar in an attempt to get off to a strong start, and others elect to save one or two days for later in the year to assist with a surge towards the championship they hope to earn. Chip Ganassi Racing and reigning champion Alex Palou weren’t shy in crediting their decision to test shortly before the Portland race last year — Round 14 of 16 — where the Spaniard snatched pole from title rival Pato O’Ward, went on to win the race, and all but moved the championship out of the Arrow McLaren SP driver’s hands.
A dismal qualifying had Will Power among the tailenders at the start, but he charged through the field regardless to take fourth. Michael Levitt/Motorsport Images

Testing strategy also played a role in how the Barber weekend went for the title-contending teams, with Team Penske’s decision to skip a recent group test adding to its challenges as its rivals at Andretti Autosport, Arrow McLaren SP, CGR, Ed Carpenter Racing and even the little Juncos Hollinger Racing team rolling out for the first practice session with more speed to offer due to the knowledge gained at the recent test.

It was far from a coincidence that Andretti, CGR and ECR all featured in qualifying and the race, with three of those four landing on the podium. Penske’s Scott McLaughlin was the one outlier within the team as he and race engineer Ben Bretzman found enough pace to make the Firestone Fast Six while teammate Josef Newgarden had to do a lot of work — eventually using McLaughlin’s chassis setup — to overcome the deficit. He just missed the cut in P7 and Will Power was well lost in P19.

Power rallied to finish P4 in the race, followed by McLaughlin in P6 and Newgarden a distant P14 after his three-stop pit strategy went awry. Altogether, the Penske team’s call to skip Barber came at a price as they weren’t sharp enough to keep their winning streak alive to take four in a row, but the organization did flex its engineering muscles to take cars that were mostly adrift to start the weekend and round them into shape for the race.

And, critically, with Team Penske drivers holding P2-3-4 in the championship standings entering Indy, we can say the choice to save a test day for something farther down the calendar was rather smart. As it would be highly unlikely for the trio to plummet down the drivers’ standings, we are looking at a case of Penske taking note of CGR’s Portland test that boosted Palou’s title bid and choosing to do something similar to benefit its contenders once we get to one of the final races.