Saturday afternoon’s bump session for the Indy 500 was as tense as ever, as four drivers competed for three positions on the last row of the grid.
Each driver was given one run of four laps to set the fastest time possible, then the rest of the hour-long timeslot was dedicated to drivers making extra runs in a desperate attempt to not be the final person on the time sheet.
The young rookie Nolan Siegel set the opening time by completing his set of four laps at an average speed of 229.566 MPH
His speed was faster than any laps he had turned throughout the weekend to that point, but was still not up to the pace of the others around him.
Katherine Legge and Graham Rahal each set times faster than Siegel, and Marcus Ericsson looked like he was going to do the same until he backed off on his fourth and final lap.
His early slowdown was the result of the Swede simply forgetting which lap he was on, and he threw away a critically important run as a result of his mental mistake.
Ericsson came to pit road and his car was attended to by his Andretti crew. They took off the engine cover and did their best to allow the engine to cool off while it sat in the sun amid 90 degree Fahrenheit temperatures.
Finally, Ericsson went back out for one final attempt as the clock wound down, and he was able to get himself into the show with a speed of 230.027 MPH.
The tension was extra high in the Andretti pit while Ericsson was completing his laps. The entire crew knew that a single mistake on track was all that was between them and an evening packing up their garage area early.
Ericsson’s fortune was Siegel’s misfortune, as he then found himself on the outside looking in and was forced to make a second run of his own as time expired.
His pace was similar to his first run on the first lap, but then he touched the wall on his second lap and spun to a halt in his damaged Dale Coyne Racing chassis.
It was the second crash of the young driver’s weekend, and immediately meant that he would not be able to participate in his first Indy 500 this year.
Siegel was obviously disappointed, but was professional through and through as he conducted interviews with media following one of the most heartbreaking events of his racing career.
“I feel like today we did the best we could do,” said Siegel. “As a team we I think had the best car that we’ve had since we started this whole event.
“Those were the best four laps I think I’ve done. It felt pretty maximized, and ultimately it wasn’t fast.
“Took a swing at it to try and find a half mile an hour to get to where Graham was at, and we were already on the limit of the trim.
“So I was going to go home because I went flat and did everything I could do. I wasn’t going to go home because I lifted, so here I am.”
His fellow drivers talked him up as well, with Graham Rahal in particular reiterating that he expects to see Siegel as a champion of the series someday.
Rahal was the main beneficiary of Siegel’s late crash, as he was next in line to be bumped off the grid should his time not have held.
The veteran continued to struggle with pace throughout the weekend all the way until his final run, with his RLL team still needing to figure out what is causing extra drag on his #15 entry.
Siegel will be back behind the wheel of his Indy NXT car in two weeks at Detroit so he can continue pursuing his championship in the feeder series, and is also scheduled to make another IndyCar start on the streets of Toronto in late July.
