James Hinchcliffe, Schimdt Peterson, IndyCar, Indianapolis, 2018

Shock as Hinchcliffe misses the cut for Indy 500 starting grid

RaceFans Round-up

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In the round-up: IndyCar race winner and 2016 Indianapolis 500 pole sitter James Hinchcliffe may not start this year’s race after he was one of two drivers who failed to make the cut in qualifying yesterday.

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Will yesterday’s news about McLaren open the door for Nicholas Latifi to get an F1 race seat? Ronin isn’t convinced:

Latifi does not have the required superlicense points and it is unlikely he will ever get to that point.
Ronin

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On this day in F1

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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20 comments on “Shock as Hinchcliffe misses the cut for Indy 500 starting grid”

  1. Why the mirror image from Ocon?

    1. Chris (@chrisgalaz)
      20th May 2018, 1:23

      instagram mirrors selfies

      1. Thanks for bringing me up to speed @chrisgalaz, but still I wonder why.

        1. ColdFly (@)
          20th May 2018, 8:16

          Psychology of Perception.
          We’re used to seeing our reflection in the mirror, and our brains have trained us to recognize that image.
          When we see our face the way others see it, that can be disorienting.

          Poor selfie generation; cannot even handle a true image of themselves ;)

  2. I suspect they are going to buy a seat to get Hinchcliffe into the race. It was shocking, he was in and the team pulled his qualification so they could try a faster time, they went out and had a real bad vibration and had to scrub the run. They ran out of time while watching Pipi Mann try and qualify (she didn’t).

    High drama

    1. I thought Hinchcliffe was down to 34th place when he pulled his time and attempted to re-qualify.

      1. @mrmuffins You are right. Hinch’s fastest speed was 224.784 while Davison was the last to qualify with 224.798.

  3. My heart sank when I saw Hinch getting out of his car when time ran out. Forgot just how gut wrenching bump day could be.

    But I don’t think that’s him out of the race for the year. Schmidt is running 3 other cars, one being a part-time operation and another being an Indy one-off. It would be incredibly harsh on either of their non-regular drivers to force them on the sidelines to serve the interests of their star driver, but it feels like the only logical solution.

    I’m more gutted for Schmidt than anything else. He runs a brilliant little team, it’s sad that they find themselves in this situation.

  4. In the past Hinchcliffe would have had time to have a final run as qualifying has always traditionally ended at 6pm.

    Today qualifying ended at 5:30 & it seems they cut 10 minutes off qualifying at the request of ABC who wanted to be off the air before 6pm but insisted on having 10 minutes for post session interviews.

    1. Yeah, the cutoff was 5:50 pm, but it’s been that way at least since 2014, when IndyCar introduced the fast nine–Sunday qualifying format. It has just never mattered that much until this year because there weren’t enough cars making runs to do any bumping.

  5. Shocking disappointment for Hinch! That is the drama of the 500.

  6. “The final race weekend in Phoenix got off to a bizarre start when a man managed to evade security and hobble onto the track during first practice, brandishing one of his crutches at a fast-approaching F1 car.”
    – That has happened on few current circuits as well, though. Hockenheim, Silverstone, Circuit de Catalunya, SIC (China), and most recently Singapore.

  7. Wasn’t this in Australia, IIRC? (And going by the Foster’s branding?)

    1. ColdFly (@)
      20th May 2018, 8:26

      It’s a circuit race – not Australia. @sundank
      (Silverstone 2003)

      1. Ah, right. What happened to your original comment? Its missing for some reason…
        Now I look like a rando posting a random link.

        1. The original post was probably the one above by @jerejj, @sundark

        2. The original post was probably the one above by @jerejj.

          The ‘duplicate post error’ seems to be back, which causes replies to end up as a separate post, @sundark.

  8. 900 hp in them Indy cars, low downforce, single make aero package… Twin turbo dream

    Now if only F1 added 200 cc and 150 hp…

    What a wonderful world it could be. Oh and twin turbo.

  9. imagine if Hinch was bumped by Pippa Mann who rarely races anytime

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