A perfect month of May for Alexander Rossi came undone in a heartbeat at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Monday afternoon, with the second-place qualifier transported to a local hospital after a Turn 2 spin set off a three-car practice crash that also collected Pato O'Ward and Roman Grosjean.
Rossi was reported as awake and alert and in good spirits, but the decision to send him for further evaluation rather than release him from the infield care centre has thrown his start in next Sunday's 110th Indianapolis 500 into doubt. O'Ward and Grosjean were both cleared and walked away.
The accident unfolded with sickening speed roughly midway through the rain-affected session. Rossi's number 20 Andretti Honda snapped loose at the apex of Turn 2 on a 24-lap tyre stint, swung up the track and clattered the SAFER barrier on its left side. Before the field could check up, O'Ward's number 5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet speared into the wounded car gearbox-first, and Grosjean's number 77 Juncos Hollinger Honda spun out of the avoidance battle and reversed into the wall a few hundred feet downstream.
"It happens. I think Rossi spun, P[ato] spun and tried to avoid them. My response — so not ideal. It is what it is. Wrong place, wrong time," Grosjean said after emerging from the medical centre. "We'll work on the car. Make sure — hoping that Friday is a dry day, so we get two hours to practice and make sure our car is as good as the one that we had here and go racing."
O'Ward described a desperate avoidance attempt that left him with nowhere to go once he committed left.
"I had to go down to the left to avoid the cars on the right hand side, and I was at the highest point of G's. I had to brake, slow down — and trying to go left, the car just spun," the Mexican said. "I saw Rossi spinning, and it's quite — it's really tough to stop these cars in the middle, especially in the middle of a corner, when you smash the brake. They don't really have a lot of stopping power with how we all run the brakes."
"For me? No. I've had plenty of hits here. I'll be able to get back in it just like nothing happened. I know my guys will be able to replace whatever it is that's damaged to make sure that we're right back where we work, that the car is strong."
The collision forced O'Ward and Rossi onto backup chassis for race day, and Chevrolet — which had originally planned to fit fresh full-season engines before Monday's practice — pushed the engine swap back until after the abbreviated running, meaning both bowtie entries will start the Indy 500 on different motors and different cars than they qualified with. Under the post-2014 backup-car rules introduced after Kurt Busch's similar incident, both drivers retain their qualifying positions provided they take the green flag themselves. If a replacement is required for Rossi, however, the number 20 entry would be moved to the rear of the field for the run to row 11.
Connor Daly was another casualty of the crash without ever making contact. The Dreyer & Reinbold driver, one of the fastest cars on the ground all month and a Fast 12 graduate on Sunday, picked up debris that damaged his front wing and floor — the latter a critical downforce-generating component at Indianapolis.
In what running there was before the rain returned, Joseph Newgarden topped the time sheets at 226.1mph as the two-time winner continued to rehearse for the long climb from 23rd on the grid. Two-time 500 winner Takuma Sato was next at 225.7mph, with rookie Dennis Hauger and 2014 winner Ryan Hunter-Reay tied at 224.5mph. Carb Day on Friday now looms as a make-or-break shake-down for the three affected teams — assuming the Indiana weather plays ball.
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