Grosjean on Sato shunt: “We’ve agreed to disagree”

The shunt saw Grosjean make hard contact at Turn 10 with the #51 Dale Coyne Racing-RWR entry which he raced in his rookie season and now driven by Sato.

Grosjean approached Turn 10 at racing speed, whereas Sato and Conor Daly and three cars ahead of them were running slow, trying to create gaps so they could run flying laps without interference. The former Formula 1 driver, “I think we've agreed to disagree with Takuma on what happened, so that's OK,” before explaining his side of the argument.

“There was just no flags on the track,” he said, “and I think we should have flags when these cars are that slow to the corner. That's all. I just think if I had known there were like four cars – because you cannot see. I know there was one on the left [Daly], one on the right [Sato], that's all I knew. I didn't know there were some in front [McLaughlin, Will Power and Alexander Rossi].

“If there's only one, the guy should accelerate. Obviously there were more, but I think just a white flag to tell us that. And I just think you shouldn't be driving that slow on the racing line, that's all.”

A listening McLaughlin, who had been at the head of the line, interjected at this point, stating that the site of IndyCar’s alternate start/finish line, just after the Turn 11/12 chicane, was the problem. At several tracks, there is an alternate start/finish line during practice and qualifying so a flying lap starts and ends before the final turn, allowing cars to immediately duck into the pits.

St. Petersburg’s 1.8-mile layout is one such, and although there is a long view from Turn 9A kink down to Turn 10, T10 itself is blind, and cars preparing to start their flying laps from the alternate start/finish line may have gone through it slowly to get a clean run to start their flyer.

“Sorry, but I think that the alternate start-finish line, I probably don't agree with it,” said McLaughlin, who went on to take his first IndyCar pole this afternoon. “I think it should just be the [regular] start-finish line. I said that before; it happened at Portland a couple times, and I caught Grosjean in a peculiar spot.

“I feel like coming around a blind corner, everyone is trying to get a lap started. That's the only point we can really start our lap to get a good run. It does choke up there and… you don't see. Unless we get a flag, you don't see.

“I'm probably a big fan of probably moving the line depending on what track we go to. That's just my personal opinion.”

The crash cut short the session for Grosjean and Sato, but the Andretti Autosport team rebuilt his car – “I did aim for the middle of [Sato’s] car so I knew there would be as little damage as possible” and played down any pain in his hands from holding the steering wheel during impact.

“My hands took a little bit of… yeah, fun! But it's OK. It's not too painful when I drive, so it's fine for the race.”

Asked if it was just bruising, he replied, “Don't really know. Don't really want to know! They weren't pretty anyway, so it's OK!”

Come qualifying, Grosjean landed fifth place on the grid, 0.33sec off pole and 0.1sec behind teammate Colton Herta.

“You cannot be disappointed with a P5,” said Grosjean before going onto praise the driver to whom he lost the IndyCar Rookie of the Year battle in 2021. “I think I said last year a few times that I was very impressed with Scott jumping from the V8 Supercars to IndyCar, and it's proven today that I wasn't that wrong. Very happy that Scott is on pole.

“Yeah, for me qualifying -- it was the first time I was going to use those new reds after that bit of a story in Practice 2. I think happy to be fifth, but just think like we can still unlock a little bit of potential in the car to go faster.”