Will Energy’s morning is off to a tough begin after crashing shortly after the beginning of second observe for the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg.
The Aussie, who’s in his first race weekend with Andretti World, was rolling across the 1.8-mile, 14-turn short-term road circuit when he locked up in Flip 10 and clobbered the skin wall, inflicting important injury to the right-front of his No. 26 Honda. The incident introduced out the pink flag slightly below three minutes after the session started.
“I simply really feel unhealthy for the crew,” Energy mentioned. “Simply need to try to get it collectively earlier than qualifying.
“We now have really a number of time, however to overlook this session was a giant hit for us contemplating the session we had yesterday. Yeah, not a perfect begin. Yeah, had a number of points yesterday that we hopefully resolved, however now we’re not going to know till I get to run.”
Energy, a two-time winner at St. Petersburg, was coping with lock-up points throughout the first observe session on Friday. Though Saturday morning noticed humid circumstances go away the observe with a slender dry line to start out, the 44-year-old Aussie conceded it was a lock-up.
“Yeah, it was only a lock-up,” Energy mentioned. “You begin it and you then’ve locked that wheel and you have to get off to unlock it. It was simply poor.
“If it had occurred somewhat earlier, I’d have been in a position to simply go straight. Nevertheless it really occurred, so it was such a light-weight brake strain too. However like I mentioned, there have been tires that have been locked so much yesterday. So, yeah, not best.”
With qualifying occurring at 4:30pm ET later right now, following the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Collection race, Energy is not sure if a backup automotive might be required.
“I checked out it, yeah, that is a tricky one to get executed,” mentioned Energy, a two-time IndyCar Collection champion and 2018 Indianapolis 500 winner.
“For qualifying, yeah, no drawback. Nevertheless it’d be superior if we acquired out. That’d be a giant deal for us once more simply on the finish of the session, however I doubt it.
“It is a number of injury, the ground, all that. So I feel you have to repair that stuff rapidly. Yeah, we’ll see.”
The opposite important crash within the session concerned the No. 21 Ed Carpenter Racing Chevrolet of Christian Rasmussen. With simply over eight minutes remaining earlier than the break up group portion of the session, he did 1 / 4 spin in Flip 1 and hit the wall earlier than coming to a cease in Flip 2. The impression was sufficient to break the nosecone and go away him climbing out of the automotive.
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