Phoenix qualifying crash adds to early-season woes for Power

Will Power’s hopes to get off to a great start at Andretti Global have been met with a trio of punishing impacts in the No. 26 Honda.

From the seven official IndyCar sessions that have been held between last Friday at St. Petersburg and today’s qualifying session at Phoenix Raceway, Power has recorded three crashes, with two coming at the same Turn 10 corner during the opening weekend of the season and another while attempting to qualify for Saturday’s contest at Phoenix Raceway.

The back-to-back hits at St. Petersburg, which were attributed to braking feel, blighted Power’s performance in qualifying where he started 13th on a street course where he’s been on pole and won, and in the race, another collision with the same wall left the No. 26 sitting 22nd in the final standings.

At Phoenix, Power’s first lap of 174.137mph was comfortably fastest at that point in qualifying, but the rear of his car broke away on entry to Turn 1 and kept going, which caused the No. 26 car to crash rear-first into the wall and roll onto the apron before coming to a stop at the entry to pit lane.

Power climbed from the car and was seen by IndyCar Medical; he exited the visit with a limp after his knee hit the dash bulkhead in the rearward impact. With a little over two hours between the crash and the start of final practice, Power’s Andretti Global crew will be pressed for time to complete repairs before the session gets underway.

“I'm good,” said Power who will start 24th in the field of 25, alongside Felix Rosenqvist who crashed in this morning's practice and skipped qualifying. “Just my knee hit the dash when it came up. So pretty sore, but nothing broken or anything.

"Man, I just don’t know what happened to the car. It was so much looser than we were this morning; it’s very strange. That was tough. The car had been very comfortable there all day. Man, rough start to the year for sure. These sort of things happening are not good.”