The two-day Indianapolis 500 Open Test at IMS had a little bit of everything.
The first day began later than scheduled due to rain in the Speedway area. Things got going after a 90-minute delay and after most drivers did their install laps, Alexander Rossi lost control of his No. 27 Andretti Autosport machine exiting pit lane. The 2016 Indy 500 winner was able to laugh it off, but it was just a glimpse of what was to come.
There were two more incidents towards the end of the day that were much more dangerous. The first was a crash by four-time and reigning Indy 500 winner Helio Castroneves. The Meyer Shank Racing driver spun on the warmup lane between Turn 1 and Turn 2, sliding into the outside SAFER barrier. The car, which was the same car that won the race last year, suffered significant damage.
“Coming out of the pits in the warmup lane, I didn’t feel anything strange anything bottoming or anything like that,” Castroneves said. “I wasn’t even pushing obviously and the car just spun. It was a very odd situation that unfortunately we couldn’t avoid. Very unusual.” The team opted not to run the second day of the test because they wanted to take their time to repair the car the right way.
Nearly 20 minutes later, another incident took place. This time it was 2018 Indy 500 winner Will Power that spun inside of Turn 1, sliding up onto the track into the path of oncoming drivers. Colton Herta managed to dodge the Team Penske car, but lost control of his machine in the process. Herta tapped the outside wall before spinning back towards the inside of the track, and narrowly collected the speeding Marcus Ericsson.
“Scared the absolute daylights out of me,” Power said. “You know the situation, when you come up on the track and there’s a whole pack coming at those speeds. I feel terrible for Colton that he crashed because I spun. But I had zero warning. It’s just a bad situation. As soon as I finished spinning, I thought, ‘Man, there must…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Crash RSS Feed…