Qualification scatterbrain

Of all of the places I've lived without exception the locals have said "People around here just don't know how to drive in the rain". Well, today at IMS it looked like a case of people not knowing how drive with merely the threat of rain, what with all of the crashes. Looks like it should be a fun year with our seats in Turn One.

After getting like one lap in his Panoz (yes, a Panoz) Phil Giebler is now in the hospital with bruised lungs. His car looked irreparable, and most embarrassing was that despite seeing the Dephi Saftey Team helping him for many many minutes I have no idea who the sponsor on the sidepods was. That's like double-wasted money.

The fastest qualifier of the day was Townsend Bell. In a Dreyer & Reinbold car. Is there something about this in "Revelations"?

A 500 mile race is not a sprint, unless you're part of Quattro's crew trying to replace a gear box with 5 minutes left on qualification day. Then it's not exactly a marathon.

Of course, if the gun never actually goes off...

Speaking of AJ4, I hope one of the fine photographers was able to capture a picture of the usually calm and collected Foyt sitting down and looking off to the side with a "what in the world happened to me" look.

I don't know what the word for a marathon of sprinting is called but I'm sure it's not safe for the public airwaves and it's being said a lot tonight by the guys working on cars for Max Papis and Mario Dominguez.

The net result of today's festival of carbon fiber (copyright: pressdog) is that after getting all hyped up about a "real" bump day we're likely looking at Buddy Lazier, Marty Roth, Papis, Dominguez and Foyt fighting over two spots. And that's the BEST case scenario.

Noticing the disparity between John Andretti (221.550 mph) and teammate slash owner Marty Roth (215.506 mph) has led just about everyone to say that Roth should have replaced himself instead of Jay Howard. A logical conclusion, sure, but let me ask how many of you wanted ever wanted to race at Indy? OK, now how many of you grew up dreaming of being an owner? Point being it's Marty's money and not yours or mine (curses!) and if he wants to go down driving it himself then it's his purchase.

Unlike Marty, Sarah Fisher looks to be safely on the starting grid at P22. Folks, those are your dollars hard at work (especially if your name is "O'Gara").

Oh, and thanks to Mark Jaynes of IMS Radio, who during Sarah's attempt said "A lot of the blogs and chat rooms are encouraging fans to donate to Sarah Fisher Racing." There aren't exactly "a lot" of IndyCar blogs, but we happy few appreciate the generalized shout-out.

I don't know if you caught it on IMS Radio, but they were saying that Jaime Camara is on a huge seat of heat and that a driver with a French sounding first name and a Buddy for a brother was waiting in the wings to qualify Camara's car. Should things get wacky enough to push the P30 qualifier to the bubble, remember you heard it here second.

How would you like to have been Jeff Simmons today? All ready to go and getting a yellow flag from the starter because the team forgot to authorize the qualification attempt. Oops. It may not be over until the fat man swings, but it doesn't start until Super Tex waives the green flag.

As a testament to how hard Ryan Hunter-Reay hit the wall last week, note that he qualified six days later in the T car. The primary is probably sitting under a sheet somewhere near Columbus, Ohio.

All things considered, at least the rain held (mostly) and there were 33 qualified today. That's acceptable, even if the last one was a guy who was lifting in Turn One so much he slowed to 210 mph.

However little it may be, bring on the bumping.