SPEEDWAY, Ind. — For the second year in a row at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Graham Rahal had to endure the Last Row Qualifying session to secure his spot in the Indianapolis 500.
This time, however, Rahal survived being on the bubble and the No. 15 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda will start last in the 33-car field for the 108th edition of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing on Sunday, May 26.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” Rahal said after narrowly escaping a second consecutive elimination from the 500 field. “Probably not between today and tomorrow, but tomorrow and Carb Day to understand what’s gone wrong and why, and what componentry has really begun to fail for our car. And I think once we do that we’ll have a better understanding of where we go from here.”
Four drivers competed in Sunday afternoon’s hour-long session for a chance at the final three starting positions. Each driver had one guaranteed qualifying attempt in the session and whichever driver had the slowest average speed over their four lap attempt would not qualify for the race.
Indianapolis 500 qualifying speeds are determined from the average speed over a four-lap run totaling 10 miles.
Rahal was the last driver to start his qualifying attempt after Nolan Siegel, Marcus Ericsson and Katherine Legge made their guaranteed attempts. The Ohio native turned laps of 230.396 mph, 229.998 mph, 229.833 mph and 229.669 mph for an average speed of 229.974 mph.
Rahal’s run put him 32nd, bumping Ericsson from the field. The 2022 Indianapolis 500 winner had mistakenly backed out of the throttle at the start of his final lap of his first attempt and a final lap of 195.411 mph dropped the Swede’s qualifying average to 220.702 mph after having turned three laps over 230 mph.
Near the end of the session, Ericsson bumped Siegel from the field with a qualifying average of 230.027 mph, putting Rahal on the bubble. Siegel and his Dale Coyne Racing crew made one more run to get the California native into the starting field as the final minutes counted down.
However, the 19-year-old lightly hit the wall exiting turn 1 on his second lap and spun the No. 18 Honda, hitting the turn 2 wall and ending the rookie’s chances.
While Rahal survived the Last Chance session, the process of getting to that session was a nightmare in and of itself.
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