None expected to be competing in Sunday's nine-car pole shootout. None did.
After two years of chasing the powerful Chevrolet-powered cars at
“It wasn't hard," Kanaan said Sunday. “You know what you've got, so you can't be surprised by it. We saw the signs on Friday and you can't stress about things you can't control. It's like trying to predict the weather. Someone asks you if it's going to rain tomorrow? I don't know. The weatherman doesn't know half the time."
What was readily apparent at the Brickyard this weekend, though, was the wide advantage
Saturday's results rebuffed any such notion.
Rinus VeeKay, a 19-year-old rookie from
Sunday's post-qualifying practice showed the gap may be closing.
While pole-winner
“We’ve all been really happy with the cars in race trim," Castroneves said after qualifying a career-worst 28th on Saturday."You hate to start that far back as you need to pass a lot of cars and use some strategy, but it can be done from there."
Points leader and five-time series champion
None of the Chevy drivers, except VeeKay, were immune from the qualifying woes.
Two-time series champ
Power, the Australian who is Newgarden's teammate, qualified 22nd at 229.701. Carpenter a three-time pole winner was 16th at 230.211. The other Penske driver, defending race winner Simon Pagenaud of
They weren't alone.
Kanaan, a Brazilian who drives for
“I think we are better for the race than in qualifying pace," Alonso said. “Ideally, you would like to start in the front, but we don’t have the pace so let’s see what we have."
But most drivers expect the disparity to close significantly on race day.
“Honda seemed to have the advantage in qualifying trim but in race trim, I don't think the edge is as evident as it's looked the last two days," said
The Chevy drivers certainly hope that's the case.
They were more competitive before the power boost and held the top five practice spots early in practice after it was turned off, too. Plus, racing conditions could help.
“We think we've got a great race car underneath us though we weren't where we wanted to be yesterday," Newgarden said before the shootout. “But 13th is not too far toward the back and now we can focus on the race."
The recent results aren't encouraging for a quick turnaround, though.
When Chevy swept the front row each of the last two years, it won both races with Power and Pagenaud. When
The bigger challenge may be attempting to make up for what's already been lost, track position.
In a race most drivers believe will be difficult to pass, the Chevy teams may have to rely on strategy, pit stops and timely cautions to close the gap — or
“When we ran race setup, everybody was pretty similar," Kanaan said. “You look at the past when Chevy was dominating, it was still competitive. But you never like being in the other situation."
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