Scott McLaughlin took full responsibility for his collision with Romain Grosjean, which put the pole-winner out of yesterday’s race.
The pair found themselves battling for the lead of the IndyCar Grand Prix of St. Petersburg after the final round of pit stops. However the leaders collided at turn four, crashing into the tyre barriers.
Grosjean’s damage was terminal, leaving him visibly furious. He is yet to win a race since joining the IndyCar field two years ago, and hasn’t taken a professional racing victory in nearly 12 years.
McLaughlin, last year’s winner on the street track, took full responsibility for the incident in a post-race interview with television reporter Kevin Lee. “I need to be better than that,” McLaughlin said bluntly. “I need to make better decisions.”
“First and foremost, I’m very sorry to Romain. He’s a friend of mine, and I know we were both going for the win there. I just made a big mistake.”
McLaughlin made his final pit stop on lap 71 in Sunday’s 100-lap race, switching to the harder primary tyre compound. Grosjean had pitted a lap earlier and McLaughlin re-entered the circuit just ahead of his rival before the apex of the tricky right-hand kink at turn three.
Sensing an opportunity to retake the lead around a circuit where on-track overtaking was difficult, Grosjean tried to get past McLaughlin around the outside of turn four. McLaughlin covered the inside line but locked up in the braking zone and skidded into the side of Grosjean’s car, the resulting contact put them both into the tyre barrier.
“I tried to push on cold tyres,” said McLaughlin. “I just didn’t have the grip on the inside there like I did on the greens, locked the rears, and unfortunately we made wheel contact that time, and it just took us both out.”
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The two had another close call earlier in the race following the first round of pit stops, when McLaughlin came out after his first pit stop on lap 35 just ahead of Grosjean. That gave McLaughlin the net lead of the race, and he moved to the head of the field after the remaining front-runners made their first stops.
With the memory of Grosjean’s on-track skirmishes with Graham Rahal at Barber Motorsport Park and Josef Newgarden in Nashville still fresh in the minds of many – as well as the displeasure with which both Rahal and Newgarden…
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