Simpson crashes in Fast Friday practice

Kyffin Simpson earned the unfortunate distinction of being the first driver to crash during practice for the 109th Indianapolis 500.

The Chip Ganassi Racing driver, while in the midst of a qualifying simulation run with high turbo boost on Fast Friday, had the car wiggle in the middle of Turn 4 and hammered the outside wall and briefly flew – the No. 8 Honda tilted on its side – before coming back down and veering to the inside of the track and hitting the left-side wall entering pit lane.

The battered Dallara DW12, with all four corners bent or broken, rolled to a stop on pit lane, and with the AMR Safety Team vehicles surrounding the car, pit lane was temporarily blocked. The force of the first impact was enough to damage the SAFER barriers, which led to a delay while repairs were performed.

The driver from the Cayman Islands was uninjured in the crash.

“I’m all good. Just a weird crash. Everything about it was weird,” said Simpson, whose team will prepare a backup car with the chassis used at the April Indy Open Test. “Even from the out lap, just something didn't really feel quite right. Never really felt the way I expected it to. We'll go back look at some data, trying to figure out what might have been wrong and try to make sure it doesn't happen again.”