INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Alexander Rossi was taken to a hospital for further evaluation after he crashed early in Monday's practice for the Indianapolis 500.
Rossi spun going through the second turn on Indianapolis Motor Speedway's 2.5-mile oval, hitting the outside wall before the car skidded down the track with the rear end of his No. 20 car briefly dragging along the top of the wall. The trailing Pato O'Ward tried to avoid a collision but couldn't stop
in time and hit the side of Rossi's car, and Romain Grosjean was also collected in the crash.
Rossi appeared unsteady when he first tried to climb into a vehicle that took him to the track's infield medical care center.
O'Ward and Grosjean also went to the medical center, where they were both quickly checked and released. Track officials initially announced that Rossi, the 2016 Indianapolis 500 winner, was awake, alert and undergoing evaluation. Dr. Julia Valzer later said Rossi had been taken to the hospital.
It was the first crash this month on Indy's oval.
“Just wrong place, wrong time and just got collected there,” O'Ward said before Rossi's hospitalization was revealed. “These cars don't stop very well when you're going at those speeds and with how you run the brakes. Obviously, I just hit the brakes and there wasn't much I could do to avoid him, so I'm glad Alex is all right and Romain as well.”
It wasn't clear whether the crash would impact the 33-car starting grid for this weekend's sold-out race. Three of the eight fastest drivers in Sunday’s qualifying — Rossi, O’Ward and Conor Daly — all sustained damage to their cars, as did Grosjean, who qualified 24th.
Less than 24 hours earlier, Rossi came within a whisker of winning his first Indy pole. He was bumped out of the top spot by defending 500 champion Alex Palou of Spain. Palou's four-lap average of 232.248 mph was ahead of Rossi's 231.990. The Californian still wound up in the middle of the front row and is set to start from a career-best second.
O'Ward, the Mexican driver with Arrow McLaren, earned the No. 6 starting slot, the outside of Row 2, while Daly qualified eighth for his season debut with Dreyer & Reinbold Racing. Now all three, plus Grosjean, will spend the next three days repairing cars they’d spent months fine-tuning.
“The car was still really good again today in race trim, it felt really comfortable," Daly said. “Unfortunately, we got caught up in the Turn 2 accident in front of us and collected some damage. Hopefully the (crew) guys can get that all fixed up. I am still quite happy with the car.”
The grid already has changed because two drivers, Caio Collet of A.J. Foyt Enterprises and Jack Harvey, Daly's teammate, were sent to the back of the field because of rules violations. IndyCar officials said they found unapproved changes and unapproved hardware on the drivers' equipment when they went through post-qualifying technical inspection Sunday evening.
Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden posted the fastest lap in a practice session that was abbreviated first by the crash and then rain, which washed out most of the final hour that cars were scheduled to be on the track. One more short practice will be held Friday during the annual Carb Day festivities, which include the pit-stop competition.
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