Alexander Rossi to Miss Toronto Race After Friday Practice Crash

By David Morgan, Associate Editor

Alexander Rossi will have to watch Sunday’s Ontario Honda Dealers Indy Toronto from the sidelines after a crash in practice on Friday left him with a broken right thumb.

With approximately seven minutes remaining in Friday’s practice, Rossi’s No. 7 Arrow McLaren Honda looked to run wide in the right-hander at Turn 8 on the 11-turn, 1.786-mile street course, making contact with the tire barrier.

Upon contact, the steering wheel snapped back around and Rossi was unable to get his hand out of the way in time, causing the injury. After climbing from his car afterwards, Rossi was seen holding his right hand and after being evaluated and released by the INDYCAR Medical Team, it was confirmed.

Shortly thereafter, news broke that Rossi would indeed not be driving any further this weekend. As for who will replace him in the cockpit for the remainder of the weekend, that is still to be determined.

Rossi thanked the medical team for their work and explained that he is optimistic for his return timeline, especially with almost a month-long break before the next race on the schedule at Gateway on August 17.

“First of all, I’m very thankful for all the men and women on the NTT INDYCAR SERIES medical team and for all the great work they do. I do have a broken right thumb,” Rossi said. “It’s unfortunate because the injury occurred when I almost made it around the corner, and I didn’t want to give up on it, so I didn’t quite get my hands off the wheel in time.

“However, everyone seems optimistic about the kind of injury it is. We’re going to take the next steps here and get ready for Gateway.”

With Rossi now having to miss Sunday’s race, his streak of consecutive starts dating back to the start of the 2016 season, some 142 starts stretching over 8 years, 4 months, and 6 days will end here.

As for why the particular turn in which Rossi, and others, crashed in practice was so treacherous, Graham Rahal explained in his post-practice press conference.

“They have new asphalt, which is still bumpy,” said Rahal. “It allows you to brake a lot deeper I feel like or be way more confident. So that just means if you miss it, the window is much smaller.

“As you go to turn into the corner, you come off the new asphalt. It’s kind of like Iowa. Iowa, it’s great they repaved the corners, but I wish they would have just done the whole thing or certainly a lot further into the straightaway so that initial phase of the corner was not on a transition like it was, which caught Ericsson out and some other guys.

“It’s similar here. You come off of the new pavement onto the bumpy asphalt and concrete as you get to the apex of eight. By the time you’re in there, you’re rolling a lot of speed. It’s a corner that’s always done that, though. Even prior, we’d see the most accidents in eight of any corner. It’s just a challenging one.”

Arrow McLaren will have a quick turnaround to get their new driver, whoever that may be ready to hit the track on Saturday, with practice scheduled for 10:30 am ET before rolling into qualifying at 2:45 pm ET.