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.
Source: Autosport