IndyCar: 2019 Indy 500 qualifying an utter disaster for Carlin

By Asher Fair | May 20, 2019

AVONDALE, AZ - APRIL 06: Max Chilton, driver of the #59 Carlin Chevrolet IndyCar (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images) /

Qualifying for the 103rd running of the Indy 500 could not possibly have turned out worse than it did for full-time IndyCar team Carlin.

Carlin entered IndyCar ahead of the 2018 season as a two-car full-time team with two full-time drivers, and after a season during which they made a decent amount of progress in the sport, they returned to the series as a two-car full-time team this year with one full-time driver and two part-time drivers.

But after both of their full-time drivers, Charlie Kimball and Max Chilton, comfortably qualified for the 102nd running of the Indianapolis 500 last year in 15th and 20th place, respectively, the team entered three cars into the 103rd running of the race this year.

Additionally, they formed a technical alliance with McLaren Racing, which fielded an entry for Fernando Alonso to make his second attempt in the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing”, effectively giving one of the newest teams in IndyCar four cars and making them one of the largest teams on the provisional starting grid for this race.

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But how many of their drivers will actually compete in the 200-lap race around the four-turn, 2.5-mile (4.023-kilometer) Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval in Speedway, Indiana on Memorial Day Sunday, May 26?

One.

Qualifying for this race could not possibly have been a bigger disaster for the Delray Beach, Florida-based team. Three of the 36 drivers who attempted to qualify for this race failed to qualify for it, and all three of these drivers were Carlin/Carlin-associated drivers.

Chilton, the team’s lone full-time driver, recorded the slowest four-lap average speed in the Last Row Bump Day qualifying session at 226.192 miles per hour in his #59 Chevrolet. Rookie Patricio O’Ward, a part-time driver, recorded the second slowest four-lap average speed in this session at 227.092 miles per hour in his #31 Chevrolet.

Finally, Alonso recorded the third slowest four-lap average speed in this session at 227.353 miles per hour in his #66 Chevrolet. O’Ward and Alonso both crashed during the week during separate practice sessions leading up to qualifying.

The chance of three of the four Carlin/Carlin-associated drivers, with all other things being equal, failing to qualify for this race heading into qualifying was a mere 0.056%.

In other words, Carlin had a 99.944% chance to get at least two of their four drivers locked into the field for this race.

They couldn’t convert.

As a result, instead of fielding four cars in an IndyCar race for the first time in team history, they are set to field just one car in a race for the first time in team history.

Fortunately, Kimball, now a part-time driver, qualified in a solid 20th place for this race in his #23 Chevrolet, so qualifying still could have been worse for Carlin, but not by much.

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How will Charlie Kimball perform as Carlin’s lone driver in the 103rd running of the Indianapolis 500 next Sunday, May 26? The part-time IndyCar driver finished in a career-high third place in the 99th running of the race back in 2015, so he certainly knows his way around Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The race is set to be broadcast live on NBC from the Brickyard beginning at 11:00 a.m. ET, and it is scheduled to get underway at roughly 12:30 p.m. ET.