INDY 500: Big teams miss out on Fast Nine

The list of teams that missed out on a chance to qualify for the Indianapolis 500 pole was more impressive than those who were locked into the Fast Nine on Saturday.

All four Target Chip Ganassi Racing Chevys missed the cut. Both Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Hondas were out. All three KV Racing Chevys failed to make the grade. Dale Coyne Racing's four-car team was left on the outside looking in. All three A.J. Foyt Racing Hondas were humbled.

The Fast Nine was locked out by three Andretti Autosport Hondas (Ryan Hunter-Reay, Townsend Bell, Carlos Munoz), three Team Penske Chevys (Will Power, Helio Castroneves, Simon Pagenaud), two Schmidt Peterson Motorsport Hondas (James Hinchcliffe, Mikhail Aleshin) and one Ed Carpenter Racing Chevy (Josef Newgarden).

Even the Fast Nine had a surprise or two, with Bell and Aleshin displacing favorites, like two-time pole winner Ed Carpenter and 2015 polesitter Scott Dixon.

"We missed," Ganassi managing director Mike Hull told RACER. "We just didn't do a good job as a team on matching Chevy's downforce reduction parts and their aero information with the mechanical setup on the cars. We've been in with our engineers for two hours trying to find out what we missed. Last year we had a really fast car, followed the Chevy aero manual, matched it up to the mechanical side, and got the pole. This year we missed by a mile per hour. We think we had too much scrub on the tires. I think it affected all our cars. As a team we didn't do a good job."

Hull expects the CGR team, including Max Chilton, who crashed in morning practice and did not make a qualifying attempt, to work as a unit to find more speed and hopefully capture starting spots as close to the top nine as possible.

"We'll change the setup tomorrow to see if we can make some gains to improve it, qualify as best we can, and then get ready to race," he added. "Even though we aren't in the top nine, we want to understand where we went wrong. There are other Chevy teams that did a much better job."

Ed Carpenter (right, with Newgarden) has similar expectations for himself and JR Hildebrand tomorrow. With one ECR entry in contention for pole, the Hoosier also had something positive come from Saturday's events.

"Josef's in a good position, I think he's got a car to go for the pole tomorrow," he said. "Unfortunately the Fuzzy's 20 car and the Preferred Fuzzy's 6 car just aren't up to speed right now. All of the cars are handling great. We're happy with that. I'm looking forward to Monday practice and getting ready for the race but we'll see if we can go out tomorrow and move up from 14th and do our best as a team to see if we can win another pole with Josef. That car has front row potential."

RLL's Graham Rahal was another driver whose name was missing from the top nine, and after his first qualifying attempt, the Honda driver was actually slower than his rookie teammate Spencer Pigot. A second qualifying attempt improved his position and moved him ahead of Pigot, but he was still mired down in 21st on the speed chart.

"We went back out to try to learn," Rahal said of his second run. "We went back out to try a different mechanical setup. I think it was better but obviously still slow. We have got to look at why this thing is not pulling; it's just not pulling the gears it should easy. We've got a little work to do. But as I always say, and I really believe, we've got the best team out here. It's a great group of people and they do a great job of building this car so I see no reason the car shouldn't be pretty quick."

Winning the 100th Indy 500 is all that matters, but for some – including the defending series champions – the quest for Victory Lane became a little bit harder after coming up short of the Fast Nine.