Photo Credit: Forrest Mellott/IndyCar
During first practice for the Desert Diamond West Valley Phoenix Grand Prix at Phoenix International Raceway, James Hinchcliffe and Takuma Sato both suffered crashes during the session.
Hinchcliffe, driver of the No.5 Arrow Global Honda, was involved in a crash off of turn two. Hinchcliffe climbed from the car and walked to the ambulance to head to the infield care center where he was cleared and was okay. His crew is working hard to fix the car.
WATCH: Replay of @Hinchtown's incident in Practice 1 for the #DDCPhoenixGrandPrix. #INDYCAR #PhoenixRaceway https://t.co/alCZkxJcID
— NTT INDYCAR SERIES (@IndyCar) April 1, 2016
“It’s tough to tell, man. “ Hinchcliffe said. “We were just on a qualifying simulation, and had a bunch of understeer in the car and were making small adjustments in the car to try to dial it out. Turns 3 and 4 is normally a bit looser than Turns 1 and 2, and we had understeer even in Turns 3 and 4, so I made a small adjustment on the front bar and next lap I had some understeer going into it and the thing just snapped. It’s a huge kick in the nuts obviously for a race we have as little track time as we have here. I feel really bad for the guys that have to fix the Arrow machine, but we’ll get it buttoned up and just try to focus on what we can from here.”
Takumo Sato was also crashed as well in turn No.2 . Sato also got out of the car and walked under his own will to the ambulance. He was taken to the Infield care center as well and cleared and released.
“I feel OK,” Sato said. “It was a quite a big impact and (I have) a little bit of a headache, but I’m good. It was a quick spin, I lost it simply with a little bit of oversteer. We were doing a qualifying trim, so unfortunately we lost the back end and it caused pretty good damage, but hopefully we can come back.”
Both drivers would not take part in the afternoon’s qualifying session as a result of still receiving repairs.
