Ed Carpenter wins pole for Indy 500; Danica Patrick to start 7th
Ed Carpenter will start first in the Indianapolis 500 for the third time.
Carpenter posted the fastest time of the top nine drivers racing for the pole position on Sunday and will lead the field to green in the 101st Indy 500 on May 27. Danica Patrick, racing in her final Indianapolis 500 and driving for Carpenter’s team, will start seventh.
Carpenter went out second-to-last among the nine fastest drivers from Saturday’s qualifying session. He went to the top with a four-lap average speed of 229.618 MPH and just had to wait out Helio Castroneves’ qualifying attempt.
Simon Pagenaud will start second and WIll Power will start third. Their Team Penske teammate and defending IndyCar Series champion Josef Newgarden will start fourth and Sebastien Bourdais will start fifth.
Patrick, 36, is making her return to IndyCar after racing in NASCAR since 2013. Her contract with Stewart-Haas Racing wasn’t renewed at the end of the 2017 season and she announced in November that her final two races would be the Daytona 500 and the Indy 500. She drove for Premium Motorsports in the Daytona 500, where she was caught up in a crash.
The drivers who were 10-33 on Saturday raced again for those spots on Sunday. Tony Kanaan put up the fastest speed of those 24 drivers while defending Indianapolis 500 champion Alexander Rossi was the second-slowest and will start 32nd.
James Hinchcliffe was one of two drivers who didn’t qualify for the race on Saturday. Hinchcliffe could still race in the 500 if his Schmidt-Peterson Motorsports team buys out a driver who qualified for the race. However, that possibility is more unlikely than likely.
Full starting grid
1. Ed Carpenter
2. Simon Pagenaud
3. Will Power
4. Josef Newgarden
5. Sebastien Bourdais
6. Spencer Pigot
7. Danica Patrick
8. Helio Castroneves
9. Scott Dixon
10. Tony Kanaan
11. Matheus Leist
12. Marco Andretti
13. Zach Claman De Melo
14. Ryan Hunter-Reay
15. Charlie Kimball
16. Takuma Sato
17. Kyle Kaiser
18. Robert Wickens
19. James Davison
20. Max Chilton
21. Carlos Munoz
22. Gabby Chaves
23. Stefan Wilson
24. Sage Karam
25. Zach Veach
26. Oriol Servia
27. JR Hildebrand
28. Jay Howard
29. Ed Jones
30. Graham Rhal
31. Jack Harvey
32. Alexander Rossi
33. Conor Daly
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Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports.
Follow @NickBromberg on Twitter
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