Harvey “in The Hunger Games” bumping team-mate Rahal from Indy 500

Harvey beat Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing team-mate Rahal to the 33rd and final spot on the starting grid during the very last run of last-chance qualifying on Sunday.

Referring to The Hunger Games series of novels and movies, in which contestants battle to the death, Harvey bemoaned the team’s general lack of speed across the week of running at Indy.

It led to three of its cars fighting with Dale Coyne Racing’s rookie Sting Ray Robb for the final row on the grid, with one being eliminated.

“There's a lot of emotions,” said Harvey. “Like massively grateful to be in the race, massively sad that we bumped out a team-mate because I know what that means for the entire team.

“It's not a good feeling, to be honest with you. It's not a moment necessarily for celebration.

“As a team we're going to be starting 30th, 31st and 33rd, and I hated it today, felt like we were in The Hunger Games with our own team.

“When I look at the speed that [the qualifying frontrunners] can do, we're comfortably five miles an hour off. There's an enormous amount of work to try and do, in truth, and figure it out.

“For anyone who thinks we're jumping up and down celebrating, they’re a little bit mistaken today.”

Harvey only beat Rahal’s four-lap average speed on his third attempt, and even required a couple of slow laps before his final effort to cool his Honda engine. Rahal had suffered an issue with his weightjacker, and was unable to adjust the rake of his car on his run to reduce drag in a straight line.

Graham Rahal, Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda, Jack Harvey, Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda

Photo by: Jake Galstad / Motorsport Images

Harvey said: “We had done two attempts, neither of them was to be enough to get it done, and actually on the final one, I said to the guys, ‘Do you even think we can do this? The car is hot, engine is hot’, and they said, ‘Yeah, you've got to try – it's the Indy 500’.

“In that moment I just tried to forget about everything else for a moment. It's unbelievable relief. I've got to be honest with you. It's actually quite hard to process it.”

In the aftermath of Rahal’s elimination from the race – mirroring what happened to his father Bobby in 1993 – it ends his run of consecutive Indy 500 starts that stretches back to 2008.

Rahal Jr has twice finished third, in 2011 and 2020, and was a frontrunner in 2021 before losing a wheel after a bungled pitstop and crashing out.

“Obviously, you have a professional side and you have a personal side,” said Harvey.

“I think, professionally, Graham is one of the most underrated drivers on the grid. I think he never really gets the respect he deserves. He's a fantastic team player. He's a great guy.

“On the personal side, Graham is a very close friend of mine. The guy texts when I've got issues or I want his advice or want to pick his brain on something. Not fun, essentially not only knocking out a team car but one of your mates at the same breath.

“Obviously, me and him chatted about it. We kind of felt like it would be me or him that gets knocked out, and obviously everyone knows it's not personal. He wants to be in the race, I want to be in the race.

“I just said to him, I just wanted to do the best four laps I could. I'm sorry it's bumped you out.”