INDIANAPOLIS — After suffering crippling leg injuries in a crash during an IndyCar race at Texas Motor Speedway in 2001, Davey Hamilton proved something to himself when he returned to the race car to finish ninth in last year’s Indianapolis 500.
Hamilton is back for another run in this year’s 92nd Indy 500 but spoke out against the unique qualifying format that only has 11 cars safely in the field after last Sunday’s second-round of qualifications were rained out.
Under the old Indy 500 qualifying format, as many as 20-25 cars could have qualified last Saturday, which would have lessened the tension as teams returned to the track for practice on Wednesday morning.
And after Hamilton qualified last Saturday and will line up 18th for next Sunday’s 92nd Indy 500 after running a four-lap average of 222.017 miles per hour, he still wasn’t backing down from his earlier comments.
“It sucks,” Hamilton said of the format. “It’s a terrible system. It’s not exciting. Every time we go out to qualify, we’re hanging our ass out. It’s the four toughest laps in racing and I’m very vocal about it.
“I would have been 13th on this grid right now and these fans last Saturday would have seen 24-25 cars qualify and we wouldn’t have been sitting around all week waiting for qualifying to come around. The top 11 guys, they are way ahead of us. It’s going to be a tough year for all the guys who weren’t in the top 11 and getting that extra track time in.
“I’ll just be straight up — I don’t like it. I don’t like the qualifying format at all. I personally feel like us as drivers we hang our tail out there. Qualifying is meant to hang your ass out. I just did that Saturday and I felt great about it but missed the top 11 by 15-100ths of a second.”
 “Now, I have to go do it all over again.”
The new qualifying format was introduced in 2005, partly because of the low number of cars entered in the Indy 500 in the days before unification of the IndyCar Series with the former Champ Car Series. With the number of cars available, IndyCar president of competition Brian Barnhart devised a plan where teams could have three attempts per day per car.
For instance, if a driver qualified for the pole but fell short of the top starting spot, he could withdraw his previous speed and make another run at it. The same could happen for drivers at the end of the grid for that day.
Pole Day qualifications locked in the top 11 cars with second day qualifications filling positions 12-22. Once that number was reached, then the slowest car on that day was eligible to be bumped. Positions 23-33 would be filled on third day qualifications with the slowed car from that session on the bubble.
The final day of qualifications would be “Bump Day” where the slowest car in the field could be bumped out of the lineup, no matter which day it qualified.
Under the old format, there was no limit to the number of cars that could make the field on any particular day, so it was conceivable the entire 33-car starting field could qualify on the first day of time trials.
Once a car completed a qualification attempt, that car was locked into the field until the full 33 cars had been set. If a team wanted to make another attempt on Pole Day, that car would be withdrawn from the lineup and out of the race, meaning an additional attempt would have to come in a backup car.
Now that the IndyCar Series is unified, there are plenty of car/drivers combinations at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, so the new format isn’t necessary, although it does provide plenty of drama for the spectators.
In Hamilton’s mind, it also provides too much drama for the drivers and teams.
“I don’t think the fans got any enjoyment out of having just 11 cars put in that field,” Hamilton said. “I don’t think the fans got any enjoyment out of Ed Carpenter bumping Davey Hamilton out. There were no cheers. I do think it is exciting to get three opportunities for the pole. But I bet you if there was a rule where if you qualified and took your time for that race, there would have been 20-25 cars in the race right now.
“Drivers like Darren Manning and A.J. Foyt IV would be in the field and Ryan Hunter-Reay wouldn’t have gone out and wrecked because he would have been happy with his 14th-place starting position, whatever position he was in at that time. And drivers like Sarah Fisher and others who had decent times but weren’t in the top 11 would have gone out so there would have been more qualifying attempts.”
Ironically, Hamilton is driving for Vision Racing, which is owned by Indy Racing League founder and CEO Tony George.
Barnhart defended his qualification format that he devised for the Indy 500 and believes that when weather doesn’t play a factor, it generates a tremendous amount of excitement.
“I think the format the last couple of years has played out very well,” Barnhart said. “I think it’ has created a lot of excitement, drama, and I think it places a premium on strategic decisions and thoughts of the team manager and the drivers.
“Qualifying around here, the lowest downforce configuration, on the edge as much as possible, is not the easiest situation to put drivers in. And to put them in that situation to do it multiple times — a guy felt like he did a good job, gets a good run, could be sitting third or fourth on the grid, and then they make a decision, ‘OK, we’re going to pull this out, and you’re going to do it again,’ it puts a lot of pressure on that driver. I thought they all responded very well. It is good excitement, and I think it plays out well.”