INDIANAPOLIS– Colton Herta‘s quest to maintain his one point lead in NTT IndyCar Series competition was made much more difficult after his car ran out of fuel during Friday’s (May 10) qualifying session at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course.
The Californian was on his final lap in the second group of round one in qualifying when the No. 26 Andretti Global Honda inexplicably started to slow down midway through the lap.
Instead of completing a lap that might have been fast enough to advance to the second round of knockout qualifying ahead of Saturday’s race, Herta pulled his car behind the tire barrier at turn 7, his engine silent for want of fuel.
“We were planning on doing two timed laps on the reds (alternate tire compound) and that was the second of the laps and we just didn’t get enough [fuel] in it, so it was just a human mistake, human error,” Rob Edwards, COO of Andretti Global and Herta’s strategist said to NBC.
“I think Colton probably had the speed on that second lap, it’s just that halfway around the lap we knew we were in trouble.”
Herta’s fastest timed lap was 1 minute, 9.5391 seconds to average 126.266 mph around the 14-turn, 2.439-mile road course. By setting the 12th fastest time in the second group of round one of knockout qualifying, Herta will start 24th out of 27 cars in Saturday afternoon’s race.
None of the Andretti Global cars actually made it out of the first round of knockout qualifying as Kyle Kirkwood will start 14th and Marcus Ericsson will start 21st.
Despite the bad luck in qualifying, there was at least one friendly face around to pick Herta up.
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