INDIANAPOLIS — Kyle Larson had his first big moment in May at Indianapolis Motor Speedway as he prepared to take a crack at nabbing the Indy 500 pole position as a rookie.
The 2021 NASCAR Cup Series champion nearly lost control of his No. 17 Dallara-Chevrolet after a 235-mph wiggle between Turns 1 and 2 on the 2.5-mile oval. Larson was able to gather the car up before sliding into the outside SAFER barrier, but he immediately aborted his four-lap qualifying simulation and headed to the pit lane.
“I feel like in these cars, whenever I get tight or understeer and add more wheel than I would want to, it gets to a point where it finally like grabs and then wants to snap,” Larson told NBC Sports’ Marty Snider. “So that was that moment and then we went out again and put together a complete run.
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“I just had a good vibration so I couldn’t really see that well that time, so that made things a little bit sketchy but yeah good to run through some things there and then go talk about a little bit and see if we get a little bit faster and more comfortable.”
Larson, who will attempt to become the fifth driver to race the Indy 500 and Coca-Cola 600 in the same day, turned the sixth-fastest lap among the 12 drivers who are in the second round of qualifying that will begin at 3:05 p.m. ET.
If his speed for the four-lap qualifying average remains in the top half of the Fast 12, Larson will advance to the Fast Six runoff for the pole position, which will start at 5:25 p.m. ET.
Larson will need to be in a golf cart heading to a helipad outside Turn 2 shortly after the session ends 30 minutes later. He will be taking a helicopter to Indianapolis International Airport, where he will catch a Hendrick Motorsports plane to North Wilkesboro Speedway, where the 8:14 p.m. green flag for Sunday night’s All-Star Race.
During a two-hour practice at Indy, Josef Newgarden turned the fastest lap (234.052 mph), followed by Felix Rosenqvist, Pato O’Ward, Alexander Rossi and Kyle Kirkwood.
Team Penske’s Will Power, who had paced Saturday’s first day of qualifying ahead of teammates Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin, was a frustrating 11th on the speed chart after he became the seventh Chevrolet driver to experience a plenum fire during a qualifying run.
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Manufacturer executives are expecting no issues for the race.
“The engine stops, just dies for however long,” Power said. “It kills your speed massively. Yeah, I don’t where the speed is now. Sort of feeling a weird vibration on the front straight. We’ll look into it. Will be tough to make top six as we sit.”
Power said he thought his No. 12 Dallara-Chevrolet had an engine failure because of the vibration.
“They’ll have to look at the data; maybe it’s gearbox issue,” Power told Snider. “I don’t know. It may not even be an issue. It may be just something vibrating, an aero piece. Yeah, so we’ve got to go through a few (things), but we should have (done a second qualifying run) yesterday. Honestly, we should have run. I wanted to, and we didn’t, and that’s a bad decision in my opinion because we just wasted a run on the wrong aero bits and now we’re struggling with this stuff, so it’s our fault.”
In addition to two rounds of pole qualifying to set the first four rows for the May 26 race, the Last Chance Qualifying session will happen at 4:15 p.m. ET with Marcus Ericsson, Katherine Legge, Graham Rahal and Nolan Siegel battling for the last three spots in the race.
Coverage will begin at 3 p.m. ET on NBC and Peacock, continuing through 6 p.m.
Follow along here for live updates from the second day of Indy 500 qualifying.
Source Agencies
