“This place doesn’t scare me” - Herta’s dramatic Indy 500 qualifying

Credit: Mike Young

Little over one hour into the opening day of qualifying for the 109th Running of the Indianapolis 500, disaster struck for Colton Herta.

For those looking on, it was a moment of sheer terror. 

The No.26 Andretti Global Honda slid up high in Turn 1 on Lap 1 of Herta’s first qualifying run, spinning and striking the SAFER barrier with the front-left corner. The impact hooked the rear left into the wall, with the force lifting the car airborne.

The car landed heavily on its left side and skidded upside down at speed back towards the SAFER barrier. The in-cockpit helmet-focused camera showed Herta showered in sparks before a heavy cockpit-first secondary impact with the wall - almost forceful enough to turn the car over again - with the black, white and yellow machine still inverted. 

Anxious moments followed as the AMR Safety Team responded in typically prompt fashion, tending to Herta and turning the stricken car back upright. It was one of those dreaded heart-in-mouth moments before Herta emerged from the car, albeit a little gingerly, under his own steam.

It is not a stretch to suggest it was yet another instance of IndyCar’s safety innovations preventing possible tragedy. The aeroscreen protected Herta on the initial landing as the car slammed on the asphalt before undeniably preventing possible disaster as the car contacted the SAFER barrier again with the cockpit as the car slid upside down.

It was not an understatement to suggest a life may have been saved at the Speedway.

Those who observed the crash watched with anguish and gratitude in equal measure as Herta emerged from such a terrifying accident. The competitive consequence for Herta’s Indy 500 campaign was secondary.

But racing drivers are not wired like us mere mortals. Within 30 minutes, Herta was seen and released by IndyCar Medical. And then there was only one thought on his mind: get back out on track.

Credit: Travis Hinkle

As with any accident on an opening qualifying run, Herta was placed in immediate jeopardy of having to return on Sunday for Last Chance Qualifying. He was at risk of being the one driver sent home from the 34 attempting to make the field of 33 for the great race.

The peril at the forefront of the young American’s mind was that of failing to make the show. There was not even a second thought given to the crash he had just had.

Fear of running again? Nonsense to Herta.

“This place doesn’t scare me,” he insisted. “I don’t have a problem hitting the wall here and having big ones like today. It doesn’t feel good and it sucks but it doesn’t scare me when I get back in the race car. 

“When you have that kind of mentality but you also have a team like we did today, trust in the guys and in Nathan [O’Rourke, race engineer] and everybody putting the car together to do the right thing, put the right stuff in the car the right way, it’s really not too much of a worry.”

The monumental magnitude of the multiple impacts for the No.26 machine meant Andretti quickly made the decision to switch to a back-up car. Familiar fears circled after a Thursday practice crash in 2024 left 2022 Indy 500 winner Marcus Ericsson fighting to make the field on Bump Day with sizably slower secondary chassis.

The Andretti team grafted all afternoon long - not just Herta’s own crew but those of the other three entries too - to get the spare car ready so Herta could run again before the day was done. It was days of work crammed into a relentless few hours.

But little over four hours after their driver’s crash, with an hour-and-a-half to spare in the session, the built-up back-up car was passing through technical inspection and rolling to pit lane.

Credit: Dominic Loyer

A matter of hours earlier, there was widespread resignation that the next time Herta would be on track would be shaking down his new car in practice ahead of Last Chance Qualifying. 

A date with Bump Day felt an inevitability. But not to the Andretti team. They never believed that. They could not bear the stress of a Sunday shootout to make the field again.

With over an hour to go in the session and not even five hours removed from the crash, Herta was back out on track. It was a story of astounding collective determination. Herta himself was in a certain state of awe of the work.

“What a heroic effort by the guys,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that on any car. Bare chassis, bare tub in four-and-a-half-hours to a complete car. The only thing that we transferred over was the engine. Everything else was destroyed. 

“To have a car that not only runs but is safe, the balance is right, in that amount of time, I don’t even know what to say. It was their day. They kept us in it.”

And Herta was eager as ever to repay the team-wide effort. He was raring to go and unrelenting in his own pursuit of making the field. 

Turn 1. Lap 1. Back to the scene of disaster. But there was not a chance Herta was lifting.

He may dub his team the heroes of the day - and rightly so. But Herta’s own effort to step back into a car he had never before driven at the Speedway and trust that it would stick without any sort of shakedown was heroic in its own right.

Credit: Dominic Loyer

“It’s really just a guess when you’re put in that position,” Herta said. “You have to be flat. It’s just a hope that everybody did their job. I’ve got a lot of trust in my guys, got a lot of trust in Nathan to set the car up properly and do the right things so I’m safe in the cockpit. 

“That was a lot of that showing.”

It was a remarkable show of resilience from Herta, who radioed at the end of the run to report he had a stuck weight jacker and was thus limited in in-cockpit adjustments he could make. But he still had the courage to produce a 230.192 mph four-lap run which was good enough for 29th place and no late nerves on the Bump Day bubble.

But Herta refuses to look at his efforts with any sense of perspective post-crash. There is a stark sense of despondency at what he sees as his own mistake at the scene of his in-race accident last year, when he had a possible race-winning car.

Nothing is impossible at the Speedway, but rolling off from the penultimate row in a week’s time, winning a maiden Indy 500 does feel like a long shot. It is a continuation of a start to the season that has been marred by a litany of misfortune.

“It sucks,” Herta said. “From our standpoint of where we want to be, what we want to contend with, we’re not happy just making the show. We want to fight for the pole, we want to be in the Fast 12. When we don’t get the chance to do that, it’s pretty disappointing.”

It was not the first time Herta has had a dramatic airborne crash at the Speedway. During Carb Day practice in 2022, he had a loose moment in Turn 1, making right-side contact on that occasion before lifting into the air and again landing roof-first.

Credit: Matt Fraver

On that occasion three years ago, Herta had to change to a back-up chassis following what was the final practice session of the event. He entered the race blind and was eventually parked by IndyCar for being unsafely off the pace.

But on this latest occasion, he has two two-hour practice sessions to come to refine a back-up car that was already quick enough in qualifying to evade being in the last-row shootout.

“I hope [it can get up to speed],” Herta said. “I’m less worried about that just because the window for margin in qualifying is so small because you’re so on top of the track. Any little problem or change makes a huge difference. 

“Whereas the race car, you can mess up a little bit more on balance and still make a good day of it. The problem in ‘22 is we had the floor that it was stalling. We were only running like 205 [mph] in the race. Eventually IndyCar pulled the plug on us. 

“I don’t think that we'll have that issue again. We’ve learned a lot from that situation. That was a terrible few days for us. There is a lot put in place to be able to understand a little bit more a lot of the under wings and front, rear wings we bring to the race in case we have problems like this, which we’ve had every year basically at Andretti.”

It was a disappointing qualifying day all-round for Andretti. That said, Ericsson was a positive point - a much calmer day than one year ago seeing him scrape into the Fast 12 in 11th.

But after feeling he was “fine-tunings” away from being in pole contention after Fast Friday and at the pointy end of the no-tow charts all the way through practice, Kyle Kirkwood has qualified a lowly 25th. Herta is four positions back and Marco Andretti facing Bump Day.

Credit: Paul Hurley

The 2020 pole-sitter - son of Michael Andretti and grandson of Mario Andretti - lacked speed in his Indy-only No.98 machine. He was ultimately 0.004 mph away from lifting himself to safety ahead of Graham Rahal but ran out of time to run again at the death.

He intended to run again but was too late pulling into Lane 1 - the priority lane - and Conor Daly had already rolled out on track from Lane 2. If he had run again, Andretti was confident he had the speed to make the field.

“Conor took up too much time,” he quipped. “I think we would have been just in there. But the trim level that we’re at at the end is demoralising for the speed. I don’t know what else to do. 

“Tomorrow is ours to lose. We need to just not be dumb tomorrow and do four solid ones and we should be okay. Just the fact that we’re running tomorrow is a bummer.

“I don’t want to be in that position. We have bigger problems. Just had speed problems... I’ve seen it across the garage with big teams. There’s always that one that they change every bolt on the car and that’s how fast it’s going to go. I drew that straw this year.”