INDIANAPOLIS — Alexander Rossi had surgery to repair minor injuries to his left hand Monday night following a crash earlier in the day during practice for the Indianapolis 500, his team announced.
Ed Carpenter Racing said Rossi, the 2016 race winner, hopes to drive in Friday's final practice and again in Sunday's race, even though his health status is still under evaluation.
Rossi was taken from Indianapolis Motor Speedway to a hospital after his car spun going through the second turn on the track's 2.5-mile oval and hit the outside wall before skidding 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. Romain Grosjean was also collected in the crash.
All three drivers went to the medical center with O'Ward and Grosjean being checked and released within minutes. Rossi, in contrast, was taken to the hospital after the first crash of the month on Indy's oval.
“Just wrong place, wrong time and just got collected there,” O'Ward said before Rossi's condition was updated. “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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