Hildebrand suffers hand injury at Long Beach

JR Hildebrand's participation in the next Verizon IndyCar Series race at Barber in two weeks has been thrown into doubt after the Ed Carpenter Racing driver sustained a broken bone in his left hand during a crash on the final lap of Sunday's race at Long Beach.

Hildebrand was attempting to pass the Schmidt Peterson car driven by Mikhael Aleshin when the two came together. He was assessed in the medical center, where IndyCar medical director Dr. Geoffrey Billows determined that a re-evaluation will be necessary when Hildebrand returns to Indianapolis later this week. He has not been cleared to drive.

"At the end of the race, we all were bunched back up because of that last yellow," Hildebrand said. "I was on reds and had a little bit for at least the handful of cars in front of us. On the last lap, I was making a move on Mikhail Aleshin and I could tell he was struggling. I was out of push-to-pass so I was trying to make a proper, full-out pass down the front straightaway.

"He had been starting to move over – not a major blocking maneuver, but enough to assert his line. He hit the brake a lot earlier than I was expecting, and I ended up running into the back of him. In doing so, it ripped the steering wheel from my hand and I ended up tweaking it.

"At the end of the day, to come home with an 11th-place finish isn't terrible. It is a bummer though as we were certainly on our way to finishing in the top 10 and now we are in a bit of a jam going forward. Hopefully I can get back to it here before the next race."