Because Indy qualifying is four laps, you can’t only focus on being fastest for one lap. You have to manage tires and keep the car performing well for the whole run so your overall average stays strong.
Boost is extra pressure from the turbo that helps the engine make more power. More boost can mean faster acceleration, but it has to be managed along with the rest of the car’s setup.
Term
wind speed
Wind speed changes how the air moves around the car. That can change how much grip the car gets and how fast it can go, so teams adjust for it.
Downforce is how the shape of a race car helps push it harder onto the track. That usually makes the car stick better in turns, but it can also make the car slower on straightaways because it creates extra air resistance.
Aerodynamic drag is the resistance a car experiences as it moves through air. In racing, reducing drag helps top speed on straights, but you often trade it against downforce because many downforce-producing features create more drag.
A spec car is a race car where the rules limit what can be changed. Because the car is standardized, teams usually spend more effort on setup choices—like how the aero is adjusted—rather than swapping in totally different parts.
Aerodynamic balance is how the car’s aero “push” and “pull” are set up so it handles the way the driver wants. It’s about making sure the car stays predictable and fast for the whole run, not just for one lap.
The “wings” on a race car are special panels that use air to push the car downward. That helps the tires grip the track in turns, which is the opposite goal of an airplane wing.
Term
track temperature
Track temperature affects how well the tires grip the road. If the track is warmer or cooler, the car may need different setup to stay fast.
It means the car is shaped and adjusted so it cuts through the air without wasting energy. The goal is to get good grip from the air while not slowing down too much.
Mechanical friction is the “waste” energy from parts rubbing and resisting motion inside the car. Less of it means more of the engine’s effort actually helps the car move.
They’re talking about how teams try to get pole position at Indy. It’s not just driving fast—teams adjust the car’s air and mechanical losses so it stays quick for the whole run.
The rear wing is an aerodynamic device that generates downforce at the back of the car. Adjusting its angle changes the downforce level and drag, which can strongly affect lap time and stability during Indy qualifying.
“Knock-on effects” means one change in the car can unintentionally cause other performance changes elsewhere. For example, increasing downforce might improve corner grip but also increase drag, which can hurt speed and consistency over a stint of laps.
Consistency over multiple laps means the car maintains strong performance as tires heat up and grip levels change. Teams aim for a setup that stays predictable and fast across the full qualifying window, not just for a single peak lap.
They’re describing the “almost safe” zone. If you’re around 10th to 15th, you might still miss the top-12 spot, so you have to keep pushing and make smart calls.
Qualifying is split into stages. In some years, only the top 12 are guaranteed to move on right away, so being 13th–15th means you’re still in danger of missing the next day.
They’re describing how stressful qualifying can be, especially if you’re close to the cutoff. Sometimes the best move is to accept your position and focus on the race instead.
“Pole” means starting first at the front of the race. Qualifying for pole is tough because you have to nail your lap—small errors can ruin your position.
Shift strategy is basically deciding when to shift gears. The goal is to keep the car in the “right” power band, and sometimes wind changes how the car sticks to the track, so the best shift points can change too.
Roll bars (anti-roll bars) connect the left and right suspension and resist body roll when the car turns. Changing their effective stiffness front vs. rear alters balance—how the car feels like it rotates (turns in) versus how it holds grip under load.
A weight jacker is a system that changes how the car’s weight is spread between the front and rear. In racing, that can make the car handle better and can also help reduce drag on straights so you go faster.
Cross weight is a setup measurement that helps describe how the car’s load is distributed. Changing it can make the car feel more balanced and predictable when you turn.
Hybrid system deployment is when the car turns on its electric assist. Drivers and teams use it at the right time to get extra acceleration when it matters most.
Engine maps are like the car’s “settings” for how the engine behaves. Teams can change them so the engine responds in the best way for the track and conditions during qualifying.
“Ride height” is how high the car sits. If you change the ride height at one corner, the car’s balance changes, which can make it easier or harder to turn and keep traction.
When a car turns, it tends to lean to one side. “Roll stiffness” is how much it resists that lean, and changing it changes how the car feels and grips in corners.
“Fast jacker” means the car uses the weight-shifting system quickly, especially on straight sections. It’s done to keep the car balanced and grippy as conditions change.
Concept
managing the hybrid system
“Managing the hybrid system” means deciding when to use the extra energy so the car stays fast. In qualifying, it’s about using it at the right moments instead of all at once.
A qualifying sim is basically a “dress rehearsal” for qualifying. The team tries to run the car like it will be during the real qualifying attempt—same tires, similar fuel, and as little traffic as possible.
Fuel load just means how much gas is in the car. More fuel makes the car heavier, so teams try to use the same amount as qualifying to get a fair comparison.
In IndyCar qualifying, a “tow” refers to drafting/airflow assistance from another car in front. A “no tow time” is an official-style lap filter that excludes laps where a car ahead is close enough to provide that aerodynamic benefit, so the time reflects solo performance.
Drafting works because a car ahead disturbs the airflow, creating a “wake” that affects the following car’s aerodynamics. The hosts describe how long it takes for the disturbed air to settle back down—about 10 seconds—so timing filters can be based on when the airflow benefit disappears.
When one car drives, it messes up the air behind it. If another car follows too close, that messy air can make the car stick less to the track and feel harder to drive.
Single car pace means how quick the car is when it’s not being helped by other cars. In a race with lots of cars, you usually can’t stay totally alone, so that matters.
Dale Coyne Racing is the racing team that entered the car in IndyCar. The hosts mention the team so you know who was driving and where the story happened.
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This is Off-Track.
Hello, and welcome to...
You're just gonna do it now?
One time. One time he gets all two big first britches.
Wow, huh?
I gotta be honest, I'd say I'm surprised, but...
Hey, how are things in the Emerald City?
Is Oz as wonderful as a wizard as he's made out to be?
I gotta be honest though, Dorothy's a little quieter than I thought she was.
Okay, interesting.
I thought she's gonna have more questions. She seems pretty talkative on the trip over, but she's really...
Is the whole room that green? Sorry, Emerald?
Yeah, sure is.
Okay.
At some point, I'm gonna have a background not here.
Those are doors. Over there is a wall that I'm gonna put some stuff on.
Actually, I need your help with that. This is this podcasting room that I'm building.
I'll be there Sunday.
The camera that we bought doesn't work with Riverside apparently.
I'll be there.
Anywho, hello everybody and welcome to Offtrack with Hinge or Rossi,
because we did a Thursday episode on Tuesday.
We're doing a Tuesday episode on Thursday. You're welcome.
We should apologize for having a Tuesday episode come out on Tuesday.
People are used to those on Wednesdays now.
We really just threw it all off.
Thursday episode come out on Tuesday.
So now we have a Tuesday episode coming out on Thursday,
which actually is probably closer than normal than...
Just because it's not. I don't know.
Guys, it's May. I gotta be honest with you.
It's remarkable we're doing anything at this point,
because between Alex's six hours on track, plus, plus, plus,
everything else that goes into May,
my six hours of talking about things on track, plus, plus, plus,
all the other things that go on in May,
which evidently you don't get away from when you stop racing.
You very much are still on the hook for a lot of extra stuff
when you're involved in the broadcast and other things around town,
not complaining, simply stating nobody is any time this week.
So the fact we're getting two shows out,
I'm slow clap, golf clap to the combined group,
and Tim shockingly, annoyingly, frustratingly, begrudgingly,
deserves some credit as well.
Because had he not texted me today several times,
I would have forgot.
I was pretty close to just enjoying a day off and not doing it.
I was, I, yeah, when, when I saw the phone ring,
I was like, oh no, we haven't done that yet.
Had you not called, I would have very, very much forgot
that this needed to happen today.
I was like, I had an alarm set because I was like,
all right, he's going to be done recording here.
Give him like half an hour to like get out of that.
And then let's call him and figure out what we're doing.
I gotta tell you, I greatly appreciate it.
You, you managed this.
Well, you produced the hell out of this scenario.
So well done.
You're living up to the time.
Let's pump the brakes on any patent in my back.
True, true.
We had a guest almost lined up that we're hopefully going to get
in a future episode.
We will get in a future episode.
It just depends if it's next week or not,
given that there's other stuff going on next week,
but stay tuned for an exciting guest.
I'm excited to chat to this person.
I think he'll be useful to attend.
That is part of it.
We're going to have to adjust the camera a little bit,
not chop their head off, but we'll get to that later.
So we figured in lieu of a guest,
what we would do is kind of do one of our IndyCar 101 episodes,
mainly focusing on Indy 500 qualifying,
which as we talk about all the time is one of the coolest yet
most stressful, yet most fun, yet most nerve wracking,
yet most enjoyable, yet most terrifying,
yet most rewarding things.
You know what I mean yet?
That an IndyCar driver does all, not you, Tim, that's always,
does all year long.
I just figured I'd also chime in that yes, I was also annoyed.
That's fair.
Qualifying for the 500.
So I don't know how many new listeners we have that are new to IndyCar
or to the Indy 500,
but we wanted to kind of go through what happens on qualifying weekend
from a rule standpoint and from a procedural standpoint
and then get into the nitty gritty and the behind the scenes
a little bit of what that means for teams and drivers.
I want to say this could be an evergreen podcast,
but IndyCar changes the rules for qualifying at Indy almost every year.
So more often than Tim changes his underwear, that's for sure.
No, just want to nip that one in the bud before we start that.
How old were you when you realized it was nipping the bud and not nipping the bud?
I'm 35 now, so probably like 33.
It was more recent than it should have been.
I want to say I was probably in my mid-20s before I realized it was nipping the bud.
It doesn't come up a lot, right?
I don't know.
There's a lot of things that I'm just like,
I've had this conversation before where you passively believe something.
I'm not actively, you know what?
Okay, so like when I was like three, I asked my grandpa why he was bald.
And he said a model plane came down and took off all the hair on top of his head, right?
Three-year-old me, I was like, yeah, that makes sense.
I could see that. It was a classic North by Northwest situation, right?
And I didn't think about that again for like 10 years.
So when I was 13 and I thought about it, I was like, oh, Pap lied, right?
That doesn't mean that I spent 10 years actively believing
that a model plane had come and taken off his hair,
but I hadn't yet like remembered it and corrected my beliefs.
So I think I passively believed it, if that makes sense.
So when you saw any other bald guy for that 10-year period, did you just assume?
I didn't put that together.
I waited like very soon after I was three was told that like some people go bald.
I didn't, I didn't like connect to all that.
I wasn't actively believing that Pap had had his hair taken off by a plane.
Anyway, Andy 500 qualifying.
Tim, what do you know about Andy 500 qualifying?
Because you've been to a couple of them and I'm curious to as to how much you've actually absorbed about the rules.
I don't think anybody wants to hear me explain racing, but for the most part, it's just me understanding
what your general knowledge base is because as a fan,
you might have a same basic sphere of knowledge as a lot of listeners.
I don't know.
Okay. So you get to do four laps or 10 miles.
Everybody's guaranteed one run to try and make it in the show on the first day.
There's two lanes.
If you want to make another run, you can either go in the slow lane where you keep your time from before
or the fast lane where you delete your time and go, but you get to jump the line.
They lock in the back of the field up to the last three on years that they're bumping,
but not the front.
And then they do the poll day and bumping the next day.
But I'm, I'm staying vague on the numbers because I feel like that does change.
Right.
It's always the bottom three, but sometimes it's.
Yeah.
Sometimes it's nine other times as 12.
It's all right.
Well, let's, let's get into the nitty gritty of any qualifying for 2026.
So sorry, this is not going to be an evergreen podcast for 2026.
It is a little bit unique, but it still has a lot of the same procedures and characteristics
of any 500 qualifying of the last decade plus.
So yes, two days of qualifying, 33 cars are attempting to start the race this year for 33 spots.
So as you mentioned, no bumping this year, which sort of changes the format a bit.
The last few years, what you would do is positions 13 through 30 would be locked in on the first day of running.
And how the first day of running works is as you said, everybody gets one guaranteed attempt.
The order is done by random draw.
And after your guaranteed attempt, you can run as many times as you want to try to go faster.
As you said, there are two lanes.
You can go and lane two, which is the slow lane where you just can run and try to beat your time.
Or you can go to lane one, which is always shorter.
You pull your time and you go out and run.
Normally lane one is kind of reserved for the drivers that are flirting with the back row,
because you want to be in that top 30.
So you're locked into the race because if you're 31st or worse,
you have to go qualify for the race the following day because we only have 33 cars this year.
What they're doing is they are setting the grid on Saturday from 16th to 33rd.
Everyone within that is done because normally what happens on the second day of qualifying
is you would have the top 12, which would have been decided which cars were in the top 12 on day one,
but not what position.
They would run again on Sunday as the top 12 and then they'd run again.
The fastest six from there would go and run into the fast six,
very similar to how we do it on road and street courses.
But this year, because there's no bumping, which would also be the other element of the second day,
they are taking 10th through 15th on Sunday from the times on Saturday,
running them in reverse order 15th through down to 10th,
one shot to get the three cars that will get to then progress into the top 12.
So essentially you've got those cars, six cars that are going to go for three spots in the top 12.
So 10th to 15th will run.
The bottom three will start in 13th, 14th and 15th position.
Then you've got your top 12 in reverse order starting with the slowest from that group.
You will go 10th, sorry, 12th down through first,
the rest of the order based on Saturday's times.
You get one shot.
After that one shot, the fastest six get to go again in reverse order from the top 12 into the Firestone fast six,
and then you set your grid for the Indy 500.
Not the most straightforward, but this is not a normal race.
So we do it a little bit differently.
On normal oval rounds, it is a two lap average speed that sets your position.
In Indy, of course, it's four laps, which is, as I said, one of the most terrifying things that you can do as an Indy car driver.
Qualifying weekend is, I think, the most stressful weekend of the year, especially when there's bumping involved.
Even when there's not, there is a heightened risk about qualifying in Indy,
because that is the fastest that you will go in an Indy car at any time during the year.
The boost gets turned up on fast Friday.
You're going to be hitting speeds north of 240 miles an hour, turning in to turn one and turn three, depending on the wind.
You're going to have averages in the low 230 mile an hour range.
You achieve that by that higher boost, but also peeling downforce off the car
because downforce comes at a cost of drag and drag slows you down.
Can you go into that about how you can increase or lower downforce on a car,
especially like it's primarily a spec car, so there's not that much you could change, right?
It's less about components and more about how you tune those components, right?
So you can't build your own parts necessarily, but you're given a toolbox of bits
that you can add to the car from an aerodynamic perspective to affect the aerodynamic balance and downforce level.
So essentially, the wings on a race car, they're like inverse of a plane wing.
The air that hits it pushes the car into the ground, that gives you downforce grip in the corners.
Downforce comes at a cost. Downforce has more aerodynamic drag, which slows the car down in a straight line.
So finding the balance of a car that has a lot of speed on the straight, low drag, which you want,
but has enough grip in the corners, which you get from downforce, which you also want, is the ultimate balance here.
And because Indy's a four lap qualifying and not a two lap qualifying, you have to make sure that the tires last all four laps.
You could be mega quick on lap one, but if that speed bleeds off, your average is not going to be as good.
So you don't always necessarily go for the single fastest lap that you and your car can do because you know you've got to hang on to that thing for three more laps.
So finding that perfect balance is very difficult and it is so dependent on your car, your car setup, your driver and of course the track conditions.
Things like air temperature, track temperature, wind direction, wind speed, all of these elements can affect how you set the car up for that absolute peak performance over four laps.
There's a lot of tricks that teams get into as well. There are things that teams will do to make the car more aerodynamically efficient,
try to get some drag off of the car that's not providing any downforce.
There's a lot of mechanical friction in a car, whether it's the uprights that are spinning the wheels, whether it's in the gearbox.
So there's a lot of different elements that teams work on over the off season in the build up to the 500 to make sure that all of these elements are absolutely in the best shape.
And the reason is, pole at Indy is friggin cool, man. It means something.
It's very special for teams and drivers to get a pole at the Indianapolis 500 because you've got...
What would you know about that?
I have had the full gambit of qualifying experiences at Indy.
I've been pole. I've been on the front row and just miss pole. I've been on the back row and just barely got in.
I've been out of the race and not in it at all. I've crashed in qualifying. I've had to do multiple runs.
I've had to do one run and park it. With my Indy 500 career, I've qualifying weekend has definitely been the most stressful in my days.
But it's what makes it so fun and the risk that you have to take, the commitment that you have to have,
those decisions that you make with your engineer right before you go out,
hey, are we going minus six or minus seven on the rear wing in terms of what kind of downforce level are we going to go at?
What do we think is going to be the best?
There are knock on effects to every decision that you make with the setup
and you and your engineers have to really put your heads together
and come up with what you guys think is going to be not just the fastest, but the most consistent over four laps.
Because it's not just send the car and go, right?
The driver is doing a ton behind the wheel in a modern Indy car over qualifying at the 500.
Plenty of time left on the clock, so your team always gets the win.
Call 1-800-GRAINGER, visit Grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.
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The average listener might not know a lot of these rules or a lot of the stuff that goes into it,
but a lot of our listeners probably do know a good amount of this stuff or this is stuff they can find.
But like you said, you have run the gamut on this.
You've finished in every possible way.
So take us through what a day is like for the driver or what is there that we don't see or don't know about
if we're just watching quals and having one to 18 beers.
Only 18 disappointed Tim. It's a long day.
Got to stay hydrated, pal.
Wow, those are between the whiskeys.
The chasers.
I think what you don't truly see is the level of stress.
I think that when a driver gets bumped, you see the emotion, disappointment.
When a driver gets pulled, you see the elation, excitement.
But even the cars in the middle and certainly the drivers at both end
experience just an unbelievable amount of stress in the interim.
And even if you are sort of on that edge of whether you're going to have to qualify on Sunday again as well.
So if you're in the 10th to 15th range and you're trying to make that top 12,
because prior to this year, it was the top 12 that were locked in on Saturday, not the top 15.
So if you're flirting in that 10 to 15 range, even though you're kind of safely in the show,
you really want to be in that top 12 and have a shot at pull the next day.
So you're stressed out watching the times, you're watching other cars,
you're seeing how drivers are handling, you're seeing the conditions change.
You're trying to make a decision with your team. Hey, are we getting back in line?
Are we doing lane two? Are we doing lane one?
There are so many micro decisions that have to be made and it's so stressful for the sake of forlaps.
And it can be just the longest afternoon of your life.
Sometimes the best qualifying from like a mental health standpoint is you go out after everyone's run their first lap,
you had a pretty good run, you're confident, you got most out of your package and you're 18th.
Because you're probably not at risk of going out, but you're not fast enough to make it in the top 12.
So you kind of just sit back and watch and that was honestly my rookie season.
You just kind of know, hey, I have Sunday off.
Yes, I'm there, I'm there about, we'll focus on the race car,
but we don't have to go through all the stress and BS of a qualifying weekend or qualifying, you know, yeah.
So that was my rookie season, like I think I qualified 13th,
but back then it was top nine moved on to Sunday and had a shot for pull and we weren't quick enough to do that.
I was a rookie, we were just happy to survive that first run and I think I did one run and that was it and parked it.
And that was the year that the Andretti cars were bumping each other out of the race and, you know, Ryan Hunter Ray got bumped by Marco at the gun.
And it was like, I remember watching this and just like I was stressed just watching as a,
essentially a fan slash fellow competitor and little did I know I would get to feel all those feelings,
all the feels at Andy qualifying over the next 10 years.
I remember I was, I was like, I was not there.
I was driving somewhere.
I had a family obligation that day when you got bumped, but I had it on the radio and I remember them being like,
and James Hinchcliffe will not qualify for the Andy 500.
I just remember being like, well, that's not right.
Like something's like that.
Also what I thought he's got 10 more minutes.
This is crazy.
But I did not.
Important caveat.
The day ends at five 50.
Okay.
The broadcast ends at six.
But what's what is so unique about one of the things that's so unique about any qualifying these days is just how much the driver is doing behind the wheel
because you have to be absolutely perfect with everything if you're going to qualify on pole.
And that involves not just understanding the shift strategy, which can make a huge difference and is totally dependent on wind direction.
You've got tools inside the car like the front and rear roll bars, which affect the handling, the weight jacker,
which affects the cross weight across the front axle, which has a huge effect on the handling.
Now you've got the hybrid system deployment.
You're using the weight jacker as a tool to drop the back of the car on the straights to get the rear wing out of the air a little bit more for more speed.
Okay.
You're changing engine maps.
Yes.
I know that we talk about the weight jacker.
The weight jacker is the driver can change where the weight is distributed in the car to changing.
How on earth does that work?
What is the mechanisms behind that?
So it's electronic and it's a pump that sits, it's a cylinder that sits on the right rear shock absorber and spring.
And what it does is it expands and contracts, which essentially raises or lowers the right height of the right rear corner.
So think about a bar stool.
If you put a quarter under the...
Thank you for putting it into terms I can understand.
Well, yeah, that's why I went with that.
Who made the rest of this bar related?
So you're on a bar stool and you put a quarter under the right rear leg.
What does that do?
Is it pushes the weight a little bit forward and a little bit to the left, right?
And so that's essentially what you're doing.
So you're either lifting the right rear...
Which is sometimes what you need to make the room stop spinning.
Well, exactly.
I was going to say it needs to balance you when you start doing the chair dance after your fourth whiskey.
So you either raise the right rear, which puts more weight on the left front, which really helps the front end gain more grip.
Or conversely, if you're a little bit too sharp on the front, you lower the right rear and it shifts that weight to the right front corner.
And it slows this steering down a little bit, a little bit less grip.
So again, you've got bars on the front rear, which adjusts the roll stiffness of either end.
You've got the weight jacker, you're using the hybrid, you're using what we call the fast jacker, which is using the weight jacker on the straight.
And you're changing engine maps.
The procedural side of qualifying is just so much more complicated than it used to be.
It used to just be go out and throttle the thing for four laps.
Now you have to not just stay ahead of the balance with the tools, you're managing the hybrid system, you're managing the weight jacker, the fast jacker system, engine maps change.
And you're trying to adjust from the north end of the track to the south end of the track based on wind, based on which lap you're on, how the tires are wearing.
It is mentally one of the most exhausting things that you're going to do, and it only takes three and a half minutes.
But for that three and a half minutes, you are working an absolute overdrive.
You are driving at 240 miles an hour, and it is the highest risk moment of your entire season.
To say it's stressful for people watching at home.
We did this one year, you know, wore a loop of a fitness tracker, you know, when I was in the car during qualifying for the race and forget what year was 20, maybe 21.
I was wearing one.
My wife Becky was also wearing one.
We checked our heart rates after the qualifying run and Becky's heart rate standing in pit lane watching was higher than mine in the car.
So stressful.
It is watching any 500 qualifying because there's just so much on the line.
I don't think people realize just how much the spouses and partners of the drivers are put through hell on these weeks.
They suffer.
They literally suffer.
Yeah.
But it's incredible.
You can.
You can.
We're so selfish.
It's brutal.
But you can feel the tension in the air.
You can live.
I've never, I've never been in an environment like the qualifying weekend very specifically where you can that whole phrase you can, you know, if you can cut the tension with a knife.
There is never a scenario I've experienced in my life where that was more true and more real than Indie 500 qualifying every year as a driver, as a broadcaster.
Now I still feel it because I know what everyone's going through and I mean everyone.
Anyone anywhere in the field, I know you're going through.
So it's, it is a wild, wild experience.
The team spent a lot of prep throughout practice, you know, so we were recording this on Wednesday.
Rossi was doing a ton of qualifying sims today.
You're going to do even more on fast Friday once the boost gets turned up.
But you have to do it to get the reps in so that way when you go out and qualify and your heart rate is elevated a little bit because there's more on the line.
It all just feels like a second nature sort of thing.
So to do a qualifying sim, you not only need to like have them like fresh tires.
You have to have the same fuel load that you're going to do for a qualifier, but also you need to make sure there's nobody in front of you, right?
Because if you're getting a tow, then that's not a qualifying sim.
Exactly right.
And that's why we talk all through practice about the difference between no tow times and the official times because no tow time.
How far ahead do you feel a car?
So do you feel it as a driver?
Probably about five seconds.
Does the car and the engineers notice it on data?
About 10.
So when we talk about a no tow time, they set a filter where any lap where there was a car within 10 seconds in front of you on the track doesn't qualify.
So that's a fourth of the track.
Because if you're doing, yeah.
But that's how far you can feel it, right?
It's more than half a mile ahead.
You think of a car going through the air, you got to visualize it the same way as a boat going through water, right?
So that wake that a boat creates, that disturbed water, that air behind the car is disturbed in a similar fashion.
And it takes about 10 seconds for the air to settle back down and become normal.
Otherwise, you're getting a little bit of a tow from the car in front.
And then after about five seconds behind, that's when you kind of start to feel that tow and that loss of that dirty air.
It actually has a loss of downforce and you're feeling that grip loss in the corner.
So it is a bit of an art during practice to try to get what we call an honest qualifying sim.
An honest four lap run is tough to get.
The first time it's really truly only you in the racetrack is when you get to qualifying when it all matters.
I love the Monday after qualifying when people still talk about no tow times.
I'm just like, that doesn't matter.
Yeah.
Single car pace is now relevant because you will never be by yourself in a 500 mile race with 32 cars on track out with 32 other cars on track.
Okay.
I have two other questions just because I feel like this is something that's bugged me that I didn't know when people specifically asked me.
Like, when's the first time you're watching somebody doing a qualifying run and you can tell, oh, this is going to be a good one?
Or oh, this is going to be a bad one?
Because like sometimes I think there's going to be a correlation between what's their first lap before they come to green, what speed they're hitting,
but then that doesn't always correlate exactly.
So when can you tell if a run is going to be good or bad?
When they cross the checker flag because you just...
Really?
There's not the indicators before?
There are, but you got to finish it.
I've seen, you know, the one that stands out to me is in 2017, Sebastian Bordeaux was driving for Dale Coyne Racing.
His car was an absolute rocket ship and he was driving it beautifully and in qualifying, you know, he was, I think, two and a half laps in
and he was going to be pulled by probably the biggest margin we would have seen in this generation and got loose, overcorrected, smoked the wall.
Unfortunately, Sebastian was actually hurt in that accident, but qualifying runs can fall apart in turn four in the last lap.
So you can see indicators.
The warm-up lap is sometimes a good one, but sometimes it also means they started too quick and they wore their tires out too much and they've fallen off by lap four.
Sometimes the wind changes, sometimes the cloud cover comes over or even worse, the clouds disappear and the track starts heating up during the run.
There's just so much that can change over those four laps that you really genuinely don't know where you're going to stack up until you get across the line for that final time.
So my takeaway from that is we can just mute your commentary because you don't know anything.
So if you're watching on Fox, watching on mute.
I think what I was getting at is that like, you definitely want to listen because we're going to build up and highlight the unknowns and the drama of it all.
That wasn't the takeaway I got from that.
That's what you're going for.
I feel like it's more exciting when you can hear us talk.
Maybe Will. Maybe Will's more exciting. I'll give you that.
He's got the dulcet tones.
Okay. We've gone over. Everybody kind of remembers how bad it was when you didn't qualify and the heartbreak that came from that moment and everything like that.
On the reverse, what does it mean to get pulled at ending? I mean, you've done it.
We have. I was part of a group that was fortunate enough to experience that and it's one of the coolest feelings because even though it's only qualifying quote unquote,
the amount that goes into that one session, those two days is akin to five race weekends in terms of the energy and the prep and the money and the time and for a team and a driver to be able to say they were the fastest of the 33 in the biggest race in the world.
There's a massive point of pride.
It's not just the guy behind the wheel or girl behind the wheel. It's all the men and women at the shop.
It's all the men and women on the race team that put this thing together. There's a tremendous amount of pride.
There's prize money online. There's points on the line, but more than anything, it's just being able to say that you were the fastest at the fastest speedway for the biggest race.
For us, when I was on pole in 16, it was extra special just coming off of what happened to me in 2015 and it was the same team.
A lot of my crew was exactly the same when I forgot to turn in 2015. That's correct, but you'll get me next time.
I think for us, it was extra special just because of what a difference a year had made, so to speak.
A lot of the same crew were on that car and it was the 100th running of the race.
The milestones and years like that, anniversaries are always pretty cool. It's a big deal.
It's a moment that I think any driver that's experienced it holds very near and dear to their heart and means as much or in some cases more to them than even race wins that they've had.
Which is why you should tune in this Saturday and this Sunday on Fox to watch 33 of the best drivers in the world go after their starting spots, put it all on the line for the 110th running of the greatest spectacle in racing, the Indy 500.
And mute it whenever James talks and just mute it. Just mute it. It's fine.
Look, if you're listening to this show, I mean, you might as well listen to the broadcast.
I mean, if you're willing to voluntarily just listen to us talk about nothing for a couple hours a week, you know, at least we try to sound professional on the broadcast and Will knows what he's talking about.
Sounds exhausting.
Yeah, dude. 60 hours of coverage. We're giving you on Fox this month all in. We're 12 down. We got a lot to go. But we hope that you tune in and listen. Thank you to everybody that has so far.
But now is when things really start getting spicy.
Checks in the mail.
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About this episode
Indy 500 qualifying gets broken down from the ground up: how the weekend is structured, why rules and procedures shift year to year, and what “four laps” really means for tire life and consistency. The hosts walk through lanes, guaranteed runs, bumping/lock-in, and the Firestone fast six progression to the grid. They also zoom in on the technical and mental side—downforce vs drag, weight jacker/engine maps/hybrid timing, and the stress of adjusting for wind and dirty air over just minutes.
Hinch has won pole at Indy, Hinch has not qualified for Indy, and Hinch has had days go pretty much every way you can at Indy qualifying, so he seemed like the right person to break qualifying down, explaining how it works, what's different this year, and what separates it from other races.
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