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Friday, April 27
Ray nabs second pole of season
Associated Press
HAMPTON, Ga. – Greg Ray is the undisputed master of
qualifying day. He's yet to prove he can do as well when the green
flag drops for real.
Ray won the 11th pole position of his career -- extending his own
Indy Racing League record -- with a dominating performance at
Atlanta Motor Speedway on Friday night.
|  | | Pole-sitter Greg Ray, right, and Billy Boat chat in the garage at Atlanta Motor Speedway. |
The powerful Team Menard machine circled the 1.54-mile quad-oval
at 218.265 mph -- more than 2 mph faster than Jeff Ward, who will
start on the outside of the front row for Saturday's zMax 500.
"I really enjoy all of these mile-and-a-half tracks," Ray
said. "There's certain tracks that just fit a driver's personality
and the team set-ups."
He would certainly take a repeat of last year, when Ray blew
away the field in qualifying and put on an equally impressive
performance for his only victory of the year.
Unfortunately for Ray, that race was an anomaly. Despite nine
front-row starts in his last 11 races, he has managed only three
top-10 finishes.
This season has been particularly frustrating.
Ray won the pole at Phoenix but an engine problem with 79 laps
to go dropped him to 22nd. He started second in Homestead, Fla.,
only to finish 21st when he wrecked with 39 laps remaining.
"We've got good motors, good chassis, good set-ups," Ray said.
"We've had a great performance all year long, but gremlins during
the race keep setting us back.
"To make that next step, we've got to be perfect at
everything."
Ray already finds himself in an 87-point hole to series leader
Sam Hornish Jr., who has won the first two races of the year.
The 21-year-old Hornish will begin from the outside of the third
row in his attempt to equal Kenny Brack's IRL record of three
consecutive victories.
"We just didn't have enough speed," said Hornish, who
qualified at 213.596. "The sun going down may have helped us a
bit, but I'm not as happy with qualifying as I've been. I'm not
really sure what the answer is."
Ward was second at 216.144, while Eddie Cheever Jr. (215.776)
and Mark Dismore (215.061) earned spots on the second row. No one
else broke 214.
Ray's overwhelming performance quickly had his rivals running
for runner-up.
"I was just trying to beat Eddie for second," Ward said.
"Greg has a real knack for the mile-and-a-half tracks. After he
put that number down, I was just going for the front row."
Cheever is driving his third race with the new Infiniti 35A
engine.
"There's no touching Menards around here in qualifying," he
said. "They've got something that nobody else has. But we're very
happy with the Infiniti engine."
Cheever and Robbie Buhl, the 19th-fastest qualifier, have the
only Infinitis in the 27-car field. The rest are powered by
Oldsmobile engines.
Sarah Fisher, who ran second at Homestead for the best finish of
her career, had a dismal run of 211.946. That was nearly 3 mph
slower than she had during the afternoon practice sessions, held in
sunny, warm temperatures.
The temperature dropped noticeably by the time qualifying began
at 8 p.m.
"We're a bit disappointed," said 20-year-old Fisher, who will
start 18th. "We had been practicing all day in the warmer
temperatures, and the car was perfect. ... We'll need to look at
the data and see where we lost (speed). I'm pretty sure it's the
change in temperature."
Cory Witherill, a Navajo, will become the first American Indian
to compete in an IRL event. A regular on the Indy Lights series, he
qualified 24th at 209.358.
"I'm like the first one to do it," said Witherill, warming up
for a qualifying attempt at the Indianapolis 500 next month. "We
ran into some trouble early today, but we're really pretty good."
This race was known as the Atlanta 500 Classic until Thursday,
when track officials renamed it the zMax 500 as part of a
sponsorship deal with an engine lubricant company.
The company is owned by Bruton Smith, who also happens to own
the Atlanta track. Send this story to a friend | Most sent stories
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