Takuma Sato complained that he was “reckless” when he was hit by Romain Grosjean in the 2022 IndyCar opening round in St. Petersburg’s FP2.
Takuma Sato was trying to keep enough distance on turn 10 to start the flying lap. However, suddenly Romain Grosjean rushed into it at a fairly high speed. Ironically, Takuma Sato’s No. 51 car was Grosjean’s machine until last year.
Takuma Sato’s machine jumped into the air, and both machines were out of the session.
“It’s a disappointing accident,” Takuma Sato told NBC.
“Everyone was trying to make a gap. That’s right.
“I’m sure no one wants to be in that situation, but we were all slowing down. We had to brake after going through turn 9A with a bit of kinking, but it’s still 0.5. It was close to a mile and I could see the car slowing down, so I was slowing down. Conor Daly was also behind me. “
“Grosjean was hot. I don’t know what he was thinking. He was reckless.”
“At the beginning of the morning, he has already hit (Elio) Castroneves on the out lap, installation rap.”
“I think he could clearly see the machine being double wide … I don’t know. I can’t understand him.”
When asked if he knew someone was approaching at a high speed from behind, Takuma Sato said, “I saw him getting hot, but there was a car in front and a car on the left, so I couldn’t go anywhere, and I didn’t want to intentionally hit the car in front to avoid him, so there was nothing we could do. “
“As you know, this is just a practice. This is the third outlap after Yellow. It doesn’t make sense to get that hot.”
“We lost overall time. We couldn’t even wear red tires. Sorry.”
Takuma Sato, who moved to Dale Coyne this year, was particularly dissatisfied with the new team’s car, which had only one day of testing and one practice at this point.
Takuma Sato sank to 22nd place in qualifying. Andretti Autosport’s Romain Grosjean finished qualifying in 5th place.
Early morning traffic jam at the @GPSTPETE.
The red flag is back out for an incident involving @RGrosjean and @TakumaSatoRacer.#INDYCAR // #FirestoneGP pic.twitter.com/TAHrDY8Mbs
— NTT INDYCAR SERIES (@IndyCar) February 26, 2022
Category: Category: F1 / Takuma Sato / Romain Grosjean / Indycar