Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Katherine Legge in the No.44 Hendrickson Honda is more used to the IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship; however, on Saturday, the British driver was back at the Brickyard for qualifying for the Indianapolis 500 for the first time since 2013, and it was a day she won’t forget for a long time.
Legge had a solid run and will start the race from 30th place with a four-lap average speed of 231.070MPH speaking following the action, she commented saying:
I can exhale a little bit now. My hands are still shaking. It’s just so much pressure. Come on, there’s nothing like it in the world. (After being ready to make a second run at the end of the day:) It was a bit stressful because I was out of time and we were getting ready to go do the same thing again if they were quicker and honestly we were out of time and we were at the mercy of the gods. Thankfully they were with me today. So was the Hendrickson Honda crew who did an awesome job getting me out there, getting me flat (on the accelerator) and getting me comfortable out there. So, now we will work on the race car and show what we’ve got.”
It was a disappointing day for Legge’s full-time teammates as neither Graham Rahal, Jack Harvey or Christian Lundgaard made it into the show, so they will be battling for the final row shootout on Sunday.
Speaking following the session, Graham Rahal in the No.15 United Rentals Honda stated:
“It’s a disappointing day to not be able to find more speed and sneak in there. We’ve just got to put our heads down tonight and try to find the speed necessary to sneak into the bottom three. It’s going to be tight. Jack and I are very equal it seems.”
Jack Harvey in the No.30 PeopleReady Honda commented saying:
It’s been a weird week. The first two days started out very good and then our lack of speed reared it’s head on Fast Friday. Sometimes you don’t know where you stack up until everyone is out there on the same program. We have worked very hard to find the speed but have not been able to make a big enough impact yet. We will continue to work on that tonight and come out fighting tomorrow.”
Christian Lundgaard in the 45 Hy-Vee Honda commented following the action saying:
We have basically covered the whole board on options. We have looked at every area that we track, that we can do different to extract more pace but we simply haven’t found the speed. I think there’s something in the cars that we need to identify for next time but I don’t think we are going to be able to find it here. Right now we’re working on getting in the show.”