Bubble day = Craziness.

Wow, that had to be the wildest last hour of qualifying I've ever seen. Unfortunately Sarah Fisher Racing and Andretti Autosport two of my favorite teams were right in the center of the storm.

After what felt like a death watch all day for Tony Kanaan, he was able to go out and white knuckle his way into the field that had me relieved but the decision by Conquest to not repeat their mistake of last year and pull Mario Romancini from the field and re-qualify set off a chain reaction among several teams.

Eric Bachelart made the first gutsy move of the day by withdrawing his car and driver and attempting to put it the field faster and instead of getting caught with their pants down like last year. The gamble paid off as Mario went out and put up a time faster 224.641 than Kanaan's 224.072. This sent teams scrambling.

The Brian Hetra run team of Sebastian Saavedra had one car and was on the bubble to begin the last hour and as they went out to get ready to prepare to defend their position, the unthinkable happened and Sebastian put the car in the wall. They had to helplessly stand by as the rest of the drama unfolded.

It's hard to even remember the chain of events that happened next. Kanaan bumped Saavedra. Romancini withdrew his time and posted a better time.

It was pretty obviously all day that Milka Duno and Jaques Lazier did not have speed, they both made attempts that failed. In between there somewhere Takuma Sato went out and bumped Jay Howard out of the field. I watched a very distraught Sarah during this and I would say this was her toughest time yet as a car owner.

Paul Tracy was now first in line and on the bubble. He team tried to match Conquest feat and withdrew their speed and car from the race with Jay Howard in line behind them. Tracy car's just did not respond to the conditions. Several saves were required in the four lap attempt that failed to put Paul back in the field.

Meanwhile Jay Howard was now back in the race because of Tracy's withdrawal and first in line with less than a minute of qualifying left this year. Paul Tracy was back in line behind Jay to make one last attempt. The decision had to be made stay with your time or withdraw. The section of SFR that runs Jay Howard's car made the decision to not leave it up to another driver and withdrew their time and make what would be the finally attempt this year. It seemed to be a good move to prevent Tracy from having the last shot because as Sarah would say after the day was over "the 66 car had kicked the 67 car but all over the track all month".

As a helpless Paul Tracy sat in his car and watched the final gun go off Jay made his final run. the first lap was good enough to make the race but as Sarah Fisher prayed for more speed Jay's car starteed to go away and the final 3 laps were too slow. This was a devastating blow to them finanially for the rest of the year since they will get no prize money from Jay for the race. This left Paul Tracy out of the race too.

Amazingly since the Brian Herta run team of Sebastian Saavedra was back in the race with the two withdrawals. While I hated to see Sara'sh team take a blow, it was nice to see Brian's team make the race since he described their effort as "two men and a truck" with no money for even the parts they needed.

Lost in the mad dash and not even mentioned by Verses was Danica Patrick grabbing her helmet and getting in line to defend her very poor qualifying effort. She was not being involved any further than being in line and pulling out but I think it worth mentioning since it showed how much Andretti Autosport struggled today.

Tony Kanaan is the leader of that team and everybody rallied around him today to get him in the field. Ryan Hunter Reay gave up his gearbox and any time running today so Tony could run. As Kanaan said afterwards people ask him why he does so much for his team?, it was for day's like today as he said "he has never seen so many colors of uniforms from all of his teammates working on his car at one time. The Andretti drivers showed a lot of loyalty to him day. Even the sometimes whiny Danica was upset as shown by her reaction in the morning when Tony crashed. Marco even said he was leaving Tony alone so he could concentrate.

At five o'clock I never would have thoguht Tony ws going to make the field and could have never imagined Paul Tracy not being the field. That's how wild it gets at Indy. As they say it's Indianapolis, just stick around for an hour and things will change.

This new short week format really provides excitement but stacks the desks against the smaller teams like Herta and SRF. Some ballance between the two must be met. We like the shootout format but I'd like two weeks of qualifying too.