With lightning and rain in the area, Verizon IndyCar Series officials were forced to cancel qualifying for the Grand Prix of Louisiana. As a result, the field was set by entrant points.
Grand Prix of St. Petersburg winner Juan Pablo Montoya will lead the field as he started second last week, and was able to get the lead late in the race virtue the final set of pit stops.
“We were lucky, but at the same time that’s why you need the points, when you have days like this, it will pay off,” he commented. “You know, we try something a little different for qualifying, and we made a mistake there with the set up, but it is what it is. I think our car was actually pretty good. I didn’t get to run the entire practice session in the morning. Like I put new tires on my fast lap I got, the red flag came out, and on the lap I was actually up to the point I was running I was on pace with Simon (Pagenaud), and Simon was P3 or whatever he was, so I thought we had a pretty good car.”
Team Penske will sweep the front row for the event as St. Petersburg pole sitter Will Power will join Montoya on the front row virtue of finishing second two weeks ago. Power was fourth quickest in morning practice.
“You hate to start an inaugural race with a rain-shortened qualifying session, but you have to give credit to INDYCAR,” Power commented. “They did everything they could to get qualifying in. I was fairly happy with the Verizon Chevy in the wet and would’ve liked to finish all the rounds. We will start the race from a great spot, though, and we will deal with whatever Mother Nature throws our way tomorrow.”
Tony Kanaan, who led practice on Friday, will start from the third spot in his ride for Chip Ganassi Racing, among the Penske sandwich. Penske takes four of the top-five spots as Helio Castroneves and Simon Pagenaud will round out the top-five.
“The No. 10 NTT DATA Chevrolet has just been so good all weekend here and it’s disappointing that we weren’t able to continue with qualifying to see what it could do in the rain,” Kanaan said. “I’ve had some luck in the past driving in the rain on race day and I expect that’s probably what it will look like tomorrow, so I’m ready to go. We’ll still start third tomorrow which isn’t bad at all, but I really wanted that pole position here and I felt like we had a really good shot at it.”
Sebastien Bourdais will start sixth, followed by Ryan Hunter-Reay, Jack Hawksworth, Luca Flippi and Marco Andretti. Scott Dixon, who led Saturday morning’s practice, will start from the 15th spot.
“It’s really a shame we didn’t get qualifying in today,” Dixon said. “The weather just hasn’t been cooperative for us this weekend here at NOLA. Our Brita car was fast though. We paced the practice session and were in a position to advance in the limited qualifying session we ran so I guess we did the best we could today. Hopefully the weather is better for tomorrow and we can get the race in for the fans.”
With weather in the area for Sunday afternoon, INDYCAR officials announced today that the start of the race has been moved up to 2:30 pm EST.
