The winner of today's Indy 500 will likely be out of Team Penske or Ed Carpenter Racing. Between the two, they had seven of the eight fastest qualifiers. They are Chevrolet-powered and Chevy dominated qualifying over the Honda engines.
A.J. Foyt Enterprises is another Chevrolet-powered team which could also factor into the race to Victory Circle. They have an intesting mix of drivers in wily veteran, Tony Kanaan, and speedy youngster, Matheus Leist, both of them hailing from Brazil.
Another Brazilian, Helio Castroneves, is looking for his fourth Indy 500 win, which would tie the record for all-time victories at The Brickyard. He had the fastest qualifying time in the Saturday session last week, but faded a bit on Sunday. As always, he will be a major threat to win. A fly in the ointment could be that he is not running in Indy cars full time this year, as Penske has switched him to the sports car program.
Four drivers are former Formula One men. Takuma Sato won the Indy 500 last year and the year before it was Alexander Rossi. They both have Honda power. The lone Chevrolet-powered former F1 man is Max Chilton. Sebastien Bourdais probably has the best chance of any of the former Grand Prix drivers. He is starting in the middle of row two and is the fastest Honda-powered qualifier. Bourdais, gives Honda a great chance to rain on Chevy's parade.
Rookie sensation, Robert Wickens, starts on the outside of row six. If he can recreate the magic of his previous big car outings already this season, he could be a dark horse to win it all.
Danica Patrick is another driver with an opportunity to make some noise, and history, to boot, if she can pull off the win. A couple of things she has going for her are the Chevrolet-powered Ed Carpenter Racing team and the fact that she is extremely fit and does not create much extra mass inside the car. The thing going against her is that she has not been fully active in Indy cars for some time.
You can never tell what will happen during the race except that anything can happen. Favorites can be swept-up in incidents and sleepers can suddenly be in the mix. This is especially true if there are handling problems in dirty air and high attrition. The new car design for this year has proven to be a bit unstable in dirty air, i.e., running in traffic. And this is a case of first impression because we have yet to see this new car design run in race conditions, including the three abreast and 11 rows deep rolling start. The initial laps may prove to be quite an adventure.
Here is hoping for a safe race and a great race.
Predicting the Indy 500 winner is notoriously hard. I will take a semi-illuminated stab in the dark and go with Will Power of Team Penske.
(Image from Pixabay)
