MIM driver bumped out of Road America race by team-mate Ericsson who later says he’s “super sorry”

Alex Palou could not go beyond an excellent qualifying on one of his favourite road tracks as he had to leave the Road America grand prix after only four laps. Up to that moment, the Monaco Increase driver had done an excellent job, qualifying his #10 CGR car (in distinctive American Legion livery) with a best lap time of 1min45sec3822 which had granted him third place on the starting grid. “The car is good and we kept improving every time we went out”, Palou said on Saturday night.
Yet, his very good effort was to be frustrated after only four laps out of a total 55 on Sunday. As the pack accelerated away at the end of a caution period, Palou was still trailing second placed Josef Newgarden (who eventually went on to win the race) all the way down to Turn 5 when Alex’s team-mate Marcus Ericsson saw a gap on the inside and tried to go for it. Unfortunately, there was no space for both cars to make the corner and Palou’s Dallara was bumped out, getting stuck in the runoff area with a damaged front-left corner. Once the car was recovered and brought back to the Ganassi pits, Palou event tried to resume the race following repairs, but at that point he was already 10 laps down and could not rejoin. As a consequence, Palou slipped back to 38 points from series leader Ericsson, who later commented the accident by saying “I am super sorry that Alex could not finish this race (because of the accident)”. Nevertheless, the 25-years-old reigning Indycar champ is determined to take the fight into the next round at Mid-Ohio on the first weekend of July.