Dale Coyne Racing with HMD Motorsports David Malukas in the No.18 HMD Honda will start the 107th running of the Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge from 23rd place just ahead of Andretti Autosport’s Marco Andretti after setting a four-lap average of 230.094MPH and speaking following the action he commented saying:
“We just finished up qualifying and that was the most emotionally pact, stressful, awesome day that I’ve ever had in my life. The team and I worked so hard. The only thing we had was a little bit of hope. We thought we weren’t going to make it and we managed to come up with everything we needed. On our second to last run everything was great, I just had to adjust my driving to accompany all the changes we made. I told the team to give me just one more run and that we’d get it done. Our last run was perfectly executed, from myself, the team and Honda. We managed to not just make it, but to qualify 23rd. I’m so, so happy. Today is going into the books as the craziest day I’ve had in racing.”
Rookie Sting Ray Robb in the No.51 Biohaven Honda will participate in the last-chance qualifying effort along with the Rahal trio of Graham Rahal, Christian Lundgaard, and Jack Harvey. Speaking following the action, Robb said:
“Wish we could say that our qualifying pace was due to an accident or some one time thing, but we gave our four best shots of getting into the top 30. I don’t know why, yet, but I’m trusting God with the opportunity and amazing gift of even being here. Congrats to David (Malukas) for laying down a solid 10 miles for 23rd. We’ll look at his data overnight to see what we can learn.”