500 Qualifying

IRL
Qualifying is done for the first weekend at Indianapolis. Honda was dominating on a cold and cloudy Saturday afternoon. They took the top seven slots. Julio was the top Toyota and will start 8th.

22 qualified Saturday and another 4 went Sunday. At this point only Greg Ray has a car that everyone assumes will make an attempt. His team was in tech on Sunday, but he didn’t practice. Word is that he is attempting to get some sponsorship.

Buddy Rice driving for the Rahal/Letterman team took the pole with Dan Weldon second and Dario Judd third. Rice’s speed average of 222.024 was slower than the 223.7 that Tony Kanaan put up in the practice session Saturday, but higher than Rice had been all month. He seemed to be the only one who did not lose speed. So now we have 26 cars in the field.

Larry Foyt is slowest at 213.277. That leaves 7 spots to fill. With Ray making 27 that leaves 6. Drivers wandering about the pits looking for rides include 1996 winner Buddy Lazier, his brother Jacques. 1999 ROY Robbie McGeehee, and P.J. Jones (who looks to be penciled in as the Beck Motorsports driver).

The defunct PDM team is reporting it is close to making a driver deal. Dreyer and Reinbold, Panther and Mo Nunn have all expressed interest in trying to qualify another car for the race. And the 66 Penske G-Force was out again Sunday opening speculation that a deal similar to last year could be in the works.

Honestly it looks like they will get to 33, but at what cost? If they get to 34 are they going to allow a Foyt car to get bumped? What about Mary Roth. He looped it twice last week and still isn’t up to speed, but he is still trying. Practice resumes Wednesday and runs until Sunday when the last day of qualifying takes place.

NASCAR
Junior wins again! And now Jeffy is all pissed off at the dumbass Tony Stewart for slamming him into the wall. Maybe one of these days NASCAR will figure it out and suspend that moron!