Bumping In

By Blake Johnson
Speedway, Ind. – The Buddy Lazier and the Hemelgarn Johnson Motorsports are planning on bumping their way back into the 2009 Indianapolis 500 field during Bump Day, tomorrow. The team started the day acquiring data on practice qualifying runs in the morning. Lazier posted his fastest time of the month at 219.508.

“I thought we had a pretty good handle on the car in the morning when it was cold and the rain came,” said the 1996 Indianapolis 500 winner.

“By the time we ran our qualifying run, the sun had come out and the track had got a little warmer. We were kind of outside the window a little bit. We ran a 219 and then we started slowing down.”

Buddy Lazier turned a speed of 219.425 of the first lap of his qualifying lap but the heat of the day caused the car to slow on the next three laps. Lazier was then bumped from the field but the veteran was confident that he and the team could get the car back into the field on Bump Day.

“I think we will be ok tomorrow but we will have to wait and see. We would have liked to get it in today of course, but I have a lot if confidence in the team. We have a lot of data and even today we picked up a lot of data. That data is very important. We are looking forward to going fast tomorrow.”

In addition to his on track commitments today, Buddy Lazier also conducted interviews with the following media outlets:

VERSUS
The Indianapolis Star
CBS Radio
SPEED

WISH TV
WRTV TV
WTHR TV
FOX 59
Indianapolis Motor Speedway Radio Network
WBBM Radio

By the way, this is what the Pagoda looks like at 6:15am in the morning. It was a long day.

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This weekend’s qualifying will be live on VERSUS from 12-6:30pm (eastern) on Saturday May 16th and 12-6:30pm (eastern) on Saturday May 17th. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway Radio Network will also have live coverage.

All images in this blog were shot by of and are property of Blake Johnson © 2009.