One of those days

 The Indianapolis  Motor Speedway in May is a loud, hectic, utterly ungovernable place, and Vegas must hate it something fierce. That's because when you put loud, hectic and unruly inside its vast and ancient acreage, weird, un-bet-able stuff tends to happen.

Or to put it another way: What the hell WAS that yesterday?

Scott McLaughlin crashed, Will Power and two-time 500 king Josef Newgarden failed tech -- failed tech -- and, poof, the lordly regime of Roger Penske removed itself from the chase for the pole.

Scott Dixon, Alex Palou and IndyCar's other lordly regime, Chip Ganassi Racing, failed to land on the front row despite not having to run against the Penskes.

And the guy who wound up on the pole?

A 25-year-old rookie who was born in Israel, grew up in Russia, and who was driving for a rookie team, PREMA out of Italy.

Who had that on his or her DraftKings bingo card?

Not even young Robert Swartzman or Prema, probably, but Indy follows its own path, and sometimes that path is crowded with unmarked switchbacks. And so, after Takuma Sato put his one-off Rahal Letterman Lanigan ride on the pole with the first Fast Six run, along came Swartzman to put four calm, perfect laps together to nudge Sato to second.

Then he sat and watched as first Pato O'Ward and then Felix Rosenqvist -- two veterans who understand the wiles of this treacherous place -- took their shots as the shadows lengthened. Both came up short.

And there was the kid from Tel Aviv, trying to get his head around the fact that in a week he'd be leading the field to the green in motorsports' most iconic event.

 He'll be the first rookie to do so in 42 years, when an Italian rookie named Teo Fabi -- who started out as an Olympic downhill skier, speaking of oddities -- put the Skoal Bandit on pole for the 1983 race. And Prema will be the first rookie team to start on the pole since 1984, when defending 500 champ Tom Sneva broke the track record and won the pole for fledgling Mayer Motor Racing.

At any rate, here's your front row for Sunday: A rookie from Israel; a one-off driver who's also won this race twice; and O'Ward, who was passed for the win by Newgarden with two turns to go last year.

That's PREMA, RLL and Arrow-McLaren, if you're keeping score at home. First time since 2013 neither Penske nor Ganassi has put a car on the front row.

The guy who won that year?

Tony Kanaan. Driving for KV Racing Technology, a team that had never won much of note in IndyCar until that day.

I'm not sayin'. I'm just sayin'.