Rahal spins to avoid Andretti

UPDATE “We were just hoping for a smooth day of practice for the McDonald’s team and it was going good but with John’s incident there at the end we decided to call it a day. I just had to react as quickly as I could. When I was told the yellow came out I was going to go high then I saw the debris. Stuff was flying everywhere, the car basically exploded when he hit. So I tried to go to the high side and right when I went to the high side, he started to roll backwards into my path and I was going to T-bone him basically so I turned hard left and hit the brakes as hard as I could and it locked up the rears as I did and that’s why I spun.

More than anything I was just lucky that I could keep it off both the inside and outside walls. Keeping it off the inside wall was just luck because I took my hands off the wheel. I got out of the throttle coming out of Turn 1 but of course you can’t hit the brakes too hard so I lifted as much as I could and tried to look ahead and see how to react. When he hit, debris was flying everywhere. There were wings flying and all sorts of things and I think I was hit by one of the tire ramps. I decided to go high and that’s where he went too unfortunately and I was just lucky that I could move to the inside enough to where I didn’t collect him.

I haven’t seen a replay but to be honest, I was really lucky. We both were. It was only a half of a second after it happened before I got to the scene and we’re just lucky it wasn’t uglier than it is. The car is okay. I think one of his tire ramps hit my left front suspension and bent it but we saved all the big stuff. The only reason we couldn’t drive it back is because the right side tires are flat but I’ll happily take that. It’s better than putting the McDonald’s car in the wall." Graham Rahal

05/10/09 #43 J. Andretti did a quarter-spin to the right in Turn 1 and made heavy contact with the SAFER Barrier with the right rear. The car did a three-quarter spin back to the left and made secondary contact with the wall with the right front. There was heavy damage to the right side of the car. #02 Rahal had to do a quarter-spin to the left in Turn 1 to avoid Andretti. Rahal did not make contact and stopped on the backstretch with flat right side tires. Andretti and Rahal climbed from their cars without assistance from the Delphi Safety Team. IndyCar.com