Indy 500 Fast Friday: Crashes mar treacherous boost-up day
- Archie O’Reilly
- May 17
- 6 min read
With the boost turned up to qualifying level for the 34 drivers attempting to qualify for the Indianapolis 500, the six-hour Fast Friday practice session delivered a plethora of storylines and yet more unknowns ahead of what promises to be a thrilling qualifying weekend.
Adding to the hybrid weight, challenging conditions - a high track temperature and gusty winds - meant qualifying simulations with the high boost were treacherous. Until conditions improved as the track cooled and wind dropped for ‘Happy Hour’ late on, very few teams and drivers were able to complete clean four-lap mock runs.
There were a litany of lifts and panicky radios aplenty about cars being loose - two drivers unable to bail and save their cars, resulting in a pair of crashes - with countless runs aborted and many choosing to sit out the bulk of the day.
Qualifying is expected to be cooler but high winds are forecasted to remain. The perilous nature of Fast Friday has left a lot of questions unanswered. DIVEBOMB delves into what we learned and some key stories…
Ganassi make late charge to top charts
Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin set the quickest time of the day at the very start of proceedings. But his 233.954 mph lap - the only lap in the 233s all day - was tow-assisted.
So having made the most of the best conditions late on, it was a Chip Ganassi Racing (CGR) one-two on the no-tow charts. Scott Dixon set the quickest no-tow lap of the day at 232.561 mph, followed closely by teammate Álex Palou’s 232.528 mph average - the pair also one-two on the four-lap average charts.
For comparison, three drivers broke the 234 mph mark on no-tow laps on Fast Friday last year, emphasising the impact of the heavy hybrid system making its first Indy 500 appearance.
Andretti Global also showed strong in the better conditions late on Friday, with Kyle Kirkwood third on the no-tow charts with a 232.107 mph lap, followed by teammate Colton Herta at 232.066 mph. The pair were in the inverse order on the four-lap average charts, albeit dropping into the 231 mph range.
Marcus Ericsson, who will run first in qualifying on Saturday, and Marco Andretti were a little further down the no-tow order in 18th and 21st.
“Hopefully today is an indicator of how we are tomorrow but not really sure at this moment,” Kirkwood said. “Is it supposed to be 25 degrees cooler tomorrow and maybe a little bit windier? It requires a lot of change for everyone, including the engine manufacturer.
“I would say we’re confident in the sense that we have a shot. The past couple of days I thought we had a little bit more, even on my teammates. Colton obviously threw in a pretty good lap there at the end. So maybe lost a little pace. We’re good as a group. We’re extremely strong.
“I think all of our cars are contenders for at least the Fast 12. If we have a shot at the pole, I’m unsure at the moment. But we’re close. We’re fine-tunings away from being a contender.”
McLaughlin was the only other driver to breach the 232 mph barrier with a 232.005 mph fastest no-tow average lap speed, placing him fifth despite running in less favourable conditions. Penske teammate Will Power was marginally slower on his quickest lap in sixth.
“It was a short day,” McLaughlin said. “We went out pretty early in the morning knowing that the conditions were going to get tougher and tougher and then eventually were really, really good at the end. I thought we did a really good job at the time.
“We did two full runs and not many people actually did that, including my teammates. I feel good and I feel like we were able to knock out some really good speed. I think we’re in a really good spot for tomorrow.
“It’s definitely harder [to drive this year]. It’s a handful, especially those last couple of laps for anyone. It’s always tough around here. You just have to make sure you do the four laps and see where it puts you.”
Arrow McLaren’s Christian Lundgaard overcame early struggles to log the seventh-best no-tow lap and four-lap average. Juncos Hollinger Racing’s Conor Daly also showed strong single-lap speed in eighth; his teammate Sting Ray Robb was 10th and recorded the ninth-best completed four-lap run.
Meyer Shank Racing sat out most of the day before running late in the session, with Marcus Armstrong ninth and Felix Rosenqvist 11th on the no-tow charts. Rosenqvist impressed on his four-lap run for the Ganassi-affiliated team, with consistency putting him sixth in the four-lap average order. Hélio Castroneves was lower down the no-tow order in 20th.
While teammate Callum Ilott failed to break the 229 mph mark in 33rd, PREMA Racing’s oval debutant Robert Shwartzman - for a team that has never raced on an oval too - logged the eighth-best four-lap average. The esteemed Italian outfit has overcome early woes after failing to have their cars ready for the start of practice on Tuesday.
Alexander Rossi had some more challenging runs and was in the mid-229s on his quickest lap for Ed Carpenter Racing, placing him 25th, but Christian Rasmussen and Ed Carpenter both broke into the 231s having run in the less preferable conditions.
Who was lower down the order?
After a challenging Thursday practice session, Graham Rahal remained positive as the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing team faced the media on Friday morning. But while he found some speed to jump to 27th on the no-tow charts late on Fast Friday, Rahal again appeared to be searching at points - with one run even seeing a lift on his warmup lap.
Teammate Takuma Sato put in an encouraging lap for 12th and rookie Louis Foster placed 17th, though Devlin DeFrancesco was also lower down the order in 29th.
Arrow McLaren did not showcase blistering pace, albeit conditions at their time of running may have skewed their position somewhat. Still, Pato O’Ward was 22nd at a 230.441 mph quickest lap and Nolan Siegel 30th having just scraped into the 229s. A crash meant Kyle Larson did not complete a representative lap.
A surprise further down the order was two-time defending winner Josef Newgarden in 16th. He did run in the heat of the day but had some major lifts on the qualifying simulations he attempted. He is 33rd in the qualifying order on Saturday.
Santino Ferrucci felt he found some speed in his No.14 AJ Foyt machine after an uncomfortable start to his practice week. But the driver with a 100 percent top-10 finishing record in the Indy 500 was still below the 230 mph mark and 24th in the order. His teammate David Malukas was just shy of 1 mph better off in 19th.
Dreyer & Reinbold Racing had both cars in the low 229s, with Ryan Hunter-Reay 28th and Jack Harvey 31st, though they also sat out the best of the conditions.
Dale Coyne Racing, who had Siegel bumped from the race last year, saw Rinus VeeKay surpass the 230 mph mark in 23rd on Fast Friday, with rookie Jacob Abel three positions back in 26th. VeeKay will run last in the qualifying order.
READ MORE: Qualifying order drawn post-practice
Simpson suffers heavy early crash
CGR’s Kyffin Simpson suffered the first major impact of the week at the end of the first hour of running, with a moment in Turn 4 sending the car spinning into the SAFER barrier. It was front-left contact initially, with the force sending the car airborne.
Mercifully, the car landed on its left side rather than flipping and found itself back upright before it came to rest just past beyond the entrance to pit lane, narrowly missing the attenuator which Ericsson collected in a similar incident in Thursday practice last year.
Simpson emerged from the car unharmed but the impact with the barrier and subsequent landing necessitated a chassis change. The new car was not ready for the end of practice, meaning the 20-year-old will have to rebound from a significant crash and enter qualifying day without a completed lap on Fast Friday.
Larson gets away with another wreck
Simpson’s crash led to a lengthy delay as the SAFER barrier was repaired, followed by two brief caution periods in quick succession for debris. But the session ran relatively uninterrupted until Larson found the Turn 3 wall inside the final two hours.
The NASCAR superstar, who along with Sato crashed at Turn 1 in the April test at the Speedway, found the wall on the opposite side of the track - again in high-boost configuration. Larson had not run all day until that point and did a three-quarter spin after appearing to bottom out on the first lap of his qualifying run at the troublesome Turn 3.
Extremely fortunately, the contact was square as the front wing hit the barrier and the nose dissipated much of the impact, meaning there was limited damage. A secondary rearwards impact was not particularly sizable.
Larson immediately emerged from his Arrow McLaren car and, within an hour, the machine was back on pit lane with a replaced front and rear wing. Again unfazed by the experience, Larson was able to run an installation lap before the session was over.
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