Indy NXT

IPS: McCune makes her debut by earning Chicagoland pole

Sarah McCune made her mark on the Menards Infiniti Pro Series by earning the pole position for her first race. McCune toured the 1.5-mile Chicagoland Speedway in 29.1382 seconds (187.795 mph), taking the pole for Sunday's Chicagoland 100 by 0.1599 ...

Edited: Mar 27, 2008, 11:54 PM

Copy link

Share on Viber

Add as a preferred source

Sarah McCune made her mark on the Menards Infiniti Pro Series by earning the pole position for her first race. McCune toured the 1.5-mile Chicagoland Speedway in 29.1382 seconds (187.795 mph), taking the pole for Sunday's Chicagoland 100 by 0.1599 of a second over her Sam Schmidt Motorsports teammate Travis Gregg.

As the first driver in the qualifying line, McCune had to wait for the entire field to complete their runs before being awarded the pole. Being the first driver in line meant she was the first to test the track after the ARCA stock cars had run their 200 mile race.

"Everyone trying to psych me out about the rubber from the ARCA cars and it was a little bit skatey, but it wasn't too bad," said McCune. "My car had a little bit of an understeer, so I'm just waiting to see how I do."

Obviously pleased with her performance, McCune's wait was well worth it.

Travis Gregg will start on the outside of front row with his speed of 186.77 mph. "We probably should have been somewhere between fourth and fifth gear," said Gregg. "We just came up a little bit short."

Gregg was alerted to a potential problem with gears selected for qualifying when Jaime Camara, also running for Sam Schmidt, found fifth gear too long for his run. Camara's engineer Tim Neff told Gregg to run in fourth gear after Camara completed his run.

"I shifted into fifth gear on my warm up lap and ran both laps in fifth gear but it just wasn't enough for the pole."

Jay Drake will start third, his best qualifying position of the season. "We've had a number of races where we've been the fastest in both practice sessions and then didn't qualify so well. Today it's kind of the opposite. We were down in practice and then improved a whole bunch."

Drake's Vision Racing teammate Nick Bussell will start fourth after qualifying at 185.321 mph. "It was a good run. I was really happy with the car. I think we'll have better race car but we just didn't get the speed out of it for qualifying."

Series points leader Wade Cunningham, who has yet to win a race this season, will start fifth. Jaime Camara earned the sixth starting position followed by Jeff Simmons and Chris Festa in eighth. Jon Herb and Marty Roth rounded out the top ten.

We want your opinion!

What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?

Take our 5 minute survey.

- The Motorsport.com Team

Read and post comments

Share Or Save This Story

Copy link

Share on Viber

Previous article IPS: Chicagoland: Sam Schmidt Motorsports preview

Next article IPS: Chicagoland: Race notes

Top Comments

There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?

View More & Comment

Latest news

Laurent Mekies extends contract as Red Bull's F1 team boss

Formula 1

F1 Formula 1

Singapore GP

37 min

Laurent Mekies extends contract as Red Bull's F1 team boss

Alex Palou to drive Indy NXT machinery in Chris Griffis Memorial Test at IMS

IndyCar

Indy IndyCar 1 h

Alex Palou to drive Indy NXT machinery in Chris Griffis Memorial Test at IMS

The six drivers doing double duty in Portimao GTWCE and Barcelona WEC this weekend

WEC

WEC WEC

Barcelona

1 h

The six drivers doing double duty in Portimao GTWCE and Barcelona WEC this weekend

Into the unknown: What to expect from WEC's Barcelona debut

WEC

WEC WEC

Barcelona

3 h

Into the unknown: What to expect from WEC's Barcelona debut

Subscribe and access Motorsport.com with your ad-blocker.

From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.

You have 2 options:

Become a subscriber.
Disable your adblocker.

Subscribe now Already subscribed? Sign in here

Already disabled your adblocker?
Reload page

Manage Alerts