Article written by Marty Cmejla

In a wild turn of events, Marty Cmejla WILL be racing the 2024 Indiana 500, live on the Idk Player YouTube channel tomorrow, May 17th, at 8:00 PM ET. The race will be 200 laps around the virtual 2.5-mile-long Indianapolis Motor Speedway, with 38 drivers taking the green flag.

Marty Cmejla, originally slated to drive the #11 Al Unser, Sr. 1985 Hertz CHAMPION scheme, made his qualifying attempt Tuesday, May 14th. Cmejla finished off 39th out of the 38 cut - being 1 spot short of the show, only by 0.01 seconds.

All week Cmejla was building the in-car adjustments for a 110 degrees-or-so track temperature, when right before qualifying the track temp was raised to 136 degrees. This completely changed everything, making the track way more slick, resulting in more tight conditions (as seen exiting Turn 2 for a lot of drivers during qualifying).

On Cmejla's first lap, he had to lift way out of the gas to avoid slamming the wall like multiple drivers did exiting Turn 2. This slew himself down for his 2nd lap because it's wide open through 3 and 4. As a result, Cmejla was left with an unpleasant Q time of 40.092.

Cmejla would be bumped from the Top 27, finalizing in 34th position, meaning he would need to attemt a "go-around" Second Chance Qualifying 1-lap run. IndyCar-ringer and driver Yaroslav Donskoy lended Cmejla his in-car adjustments that he used to make it. This wasn't a good idea though, as Cmejla had 0 practice laps with these adjustments - but Cmejla was desperate and thought it would show major imrpovements.

Cmejla would run his out lap. "It was all good in turn 3. Felt a lot better than what I had before." But then once Turn 4 came around, the car wouldn't keep the traction. Cmejla had to do two minor overcorrections which set him way off the line, and right into the outside Turn 4 wall. "He's done," said co-commentator Jaret Lundberg (AKA - The Iceberg on YouTube).

When Cmejla was crashing, he wanted to get to the pits right away, and he was frustrated. But then there was the Mac Steinmeyer machine that was just entering the pits after finishing his time of 40.000. Cmejla had to narrowly evade Steinmeyer and the pit wall. He had to overcorrect again and it let him into the main pit walls, multiple times.

The rule is that in order for your lap times to count, to evade a Q DNF, you must park it in your pit stall. Cmejla was aware of the rule. But in dissappointment, Cmejla stopped right next to his stall with Jonathan Ramos yelling on the stream to "PARK IT IN YOUR STALL!" because there had been enough failures to do this already in the night.

After communication with Donskoy - "way too loose", Cmejla would finally reverse it into his stall with the damaged car. You can view the crash here.

Once qualifying was done, Cmejla was surprised, but sad to find himself in 39th. Surprised because it was higher than he thought. Turns out after the 5-minute Inactivity Timer, qualifying ended, and there was still a few names on the list but nobody was gridded up and ready to go. Cmejla missed it by 0.01 to 38th car Pravin Vijaykumar, who set a 40.082 in Round 1. 

Cmejla would MISS the 2024 Indiana 500, a car-track-combo where he finished 2nd and 6th in 2 previous starts.

It was until May 16th at 12:40 PM CT where Jonathan Ramos told Cmejla in the Discord that Cmejla would REPLACE former MC Motorsports driver Jacob Quill, who was piloting the #66 Fernando Alonso scheme. With this, Cmejla will replace Quill, moving the #66 entry to the rear. Cmejla was called up because he was first in line of the DNQ'd cars. 

"Such a blessing. To get another chance like this is awesome - and to start dead last will make it extremely fun to navigate through the field," Cmejla commented on the matter. "I think we have a winning car - actually setup properly for the race."

Jacob Quill said, "I didn’t realize I wasn’t gonna be home on friday afternoon, it was like a last minute thing." Cmejla was hopeful that someone would backout at the last second resulting in him racing.

In the end after this spew of chaos, Cmejla will be racing the #66 for 200-laps (hopefully) for tomorrow's (5/17) 2024 Indiana 500!