Huge Wreck Takes Out Five Cars at IndyCar Phoenix Grand Prix

Five cars were knocked out in a lap one, turn one accident; thankfully, everyone walked away alive.

byGabriel Loewenberg|
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IndyCar must have thought it was NASCAR last night in Phoenix. The field of 21 cars had just taken the green flag to start the race when it all went wrong. 

Just six seconds in to the race, Mikhail Aleshin's car suffered from snap oversteer, sending it sliding from the low line up across the track to the wall. This started the chain reaction that collected four more cars, and almost a fifth.

The first victim was championship leader, Sébastien Bourdais. Aleshin's spinning car plowed right into Bourdais. As both cars were heading to the wall, Ryan Hunter-Reay's left rear tire was clipped by Bourdais wing. Hunter-Reay was lucky to escape with just a puncture.

Behind Bourdais, Marco Andretti sent his car into a spin to scrub off speed knowing that an impact was inevitable. Aleshin's car bounced off the wall and straight into Andretti's car. 

A few cars further back, Max Chilton swerved and went low to avoid all of this. As his car started spinning, it started heading back up the banking in the turn. Graham Rahal had nowhere to go and plowed into Chilton's car. Rahal then hit the spinning, flaming car of Marco Andretti which had just broken free of Aleshin's car. 

Thankfully, all of the drivers were able to walk away from the carnage and were quickly cleared by the track medical center. 

Hardest hit by this will undoubtedly be Sébastien Bourdais and his team at Dale Coyne Racing. Bourdais was leading the championship with a win at the season opener in St. Petersburg, second place at Long Beach, and finishing eighth at Birmingham. Dale Coyne Racing has one of, if not the smallest budgets of the field. Chances are that most of the car is not salvageable. Hopefully, the team's scrappy, underdog championship campaign will still be able to take the to fight the likes of Penske and Ganassi.

You can watch videos of the accident below via IndyCar's official Twitter account.

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