Post Fast Friday Indianapolis 500 Grid Prediction

Here is my Post Fast Friday Indianapolis 500 Grid Prediction.  I will start with the heart brake of who doesn’t make it.  The easy ones are the #57 (which will never make an attempt even if it does some practice laps on Sunday.)  The #20 (was going to be hard to make it anyway but now with this extra drama that is going to be even harder.)  The #18 (Jakes just does not seem to have the speed so I am saying go ahead and write him off.)  Finally I hate to say it but I am calling the #78 an easy call to not make it (unable to make even an install lap today with the back up car I think they just have too much work and too little time to put a fast enough qual run in *very sad face*).  The others DNQ’s are much harder to pin down but here is what I came up with:

Position	Car #	Driver	Team
DNQ	57		Sarah Fisher
DNQ	20	Scott Speed - R	Dragon
DNQ	18	James Jakes - R	Dale Coyne
DNQ	78	Simona de Silvestro	HVM
DNQ	8	Ho-Pin Tung - R	Dragon
DNQ	43	John Andretti	Andretti / Petty
DNQ	88	Jay Howard - R	Rahal-Letterman/Sam Schmidt
DNQ	41	Bruno Junqueira	Foyt
33	34	Sebastian Saavedra - R	Conquest
32	27	Mike Conway	Andretti Autosport
31	11	Davey Hamilton	Dreyer & Reinbold/Kingdom
30	36	Pippa Mann - R	Conquest
29	28	Ryan Hunter-Reay	Andretti Autosport
28	17	Raphael Matos	AFS
27	59	E.J. Viso	KV Racing Technology
26	19	Alex Lloyd	Dale Coyne
25	24	Ana Beatriz - R	Dreyer & Reinbold
24	23	Paul Tracy	Dreyer & Reinbold
23	83	Charlie Kimball - R	Chip Ganassi
22	07	Tomas Scheckter	KVRT/SH Redline
21	5	Takuma Sato	KV Racing Technology
20	82	Tony Kanaan	KV Racing Technology
19	98	Dan Wheldon - W	Bryan Herta Autosport
18	22	Justin Wilson	Dreyer & Reinbold
17	44	Buddy Rice - W	Panther
16	38	Graham Rahal	Chip Ganassi
15	06	James Hinchcliffe - R	Newman-Haas
14	7	Danica Patrick	Andretti Autosport
13	26	Marco Andretti	Andretti Autosport
12	14	Vitor Meria	Foyt
11	30	Bertrand Baguette	Rahal-Letterman
10	99	Townsend Bell	Sam Schmidt
9	4	J.R. Hildebrand - R	Panther
8	67	Ed Carpenter	Sarah Fisher
7	77	Alex Tagliani	Sam Schmidt
6	10	Dario Franchitti - W	Target Chip Ganassi
5	6	Ryan Briscoe	Team Penske
4	2	Oriol Servia	Newman-Haas
3	12	Will Power	Team Penske
2	9	Scott Dixon - W	Target Chip Ganassi
1	3	Helio Castroneves - W	Team Penske

If you remember last year Helio put up a time in his first Fast 9 qualifying attempt that nobody could touch even in practice with a tow!  So I see no reason not to go with him again for P1.  Predicting speed however is going to be harder as it is more of a weather forecast then anything else.  My weather forecast this morning (I have not seen any newer data) was for higher winds (with incoming storms) around happy hour.  So While I think will see at lease a mid 227 before 4 o’clock after the times reset for the fast 9 pole speed will drop to a 227.059