After heavy crash, Simon Pagenaud's status for Sunday's Mid-Ohio race uncertain

LEXINGTON, Ohio – Simon Pagenaud walked away after a nasty crash that saw the Meyer Shank Racing driver’s No. 60 Honda take flight and barrel roll more than six times through a gravel run-off patch, coming to a rest upside down against a tire barrier Saturday morning at Mid-Ohio.

Pagenaud was seen and released by IndyCar medical director Dr. Julia Vaizer from the series’ mobile medical unit, but the 39-year-old Frenchman, in his second season racing for MSR, had not yet been cleared to return to the track as of late Saturday morning, according to an IndyCar release.

The statement said Pagenaud will be re-evaluated Sunday morning to determine whether he’ll be allowed to race Sunday after triggering IndyCar’s medical policy that states that drivers who undergo a certain number of Gs (a number that is not publicly release) during a crash have to be re-checked well after the impact to properly determine whether they’ve suffered a concussion.

As his team scrambled at MSR’s transporters to prepare Helio Castroneves’ Indianapolis 500 chassis for the No. 60 crew to race with Sunday afternoon, team owner Mike Shank told IndyStar that Pagenaud’s entry will not make an attempt to qualify Saturday as they wait for the driver’s medical clearance. The No. 60 will start last (27^th).

Should Pagenaud not be cleared, Shank said MSR will work to get “someone as recent as possible” to man the No. 60. As he spoke, ex-Ed Carpenter Racing driver Conor Daly was sitting in MSR’s transporter after spending several minutes talking with MSR mechanics and engineers and getting a first look at the team’s steering wheel setup before he stepped out of sight.

The crash, which took place in the runoff to drivers’ left in Turn 4 – the start of the “Esses” that follow the long straight after the Turn 2 hairpin – was caused by a “manufacturer brake failure,” something Pagenaud said he had diagnosed before his car began soaring and rolling through the air.

He cleared the downward-sloped grassy runoff, began rolling clockwise and landed on the car's right side in the gravel before spinning more than six times and coming to a stop upside down against the outer tire barrier.

“Yeah, (brake) pedal was to the floor, no deceleration whatsoever – and in the section of the track that’s the worst,” he told IndyStar at the care center following his crash. “Thankfully, IndyCar has done a tremendous job on safety, and I was very thankful during the roll for the aeroscreen. I think it had a huge impact on me standing here, talking and in good shape.”

Pagenaud, who this year has nursed a lingering right-hand injury he aggravated during a big crash at St. Pete in March, said he felt physically fine after his evaluation but wasn’t about to take the prospect of a potential brain injury lightly. In recent years, drivers, including Felix Rosenqvist, Jack Harvey and Oliver Askew, have missed time either due to diagnosed concussions or concussion-like symptoms.

“I feel fine, but you have to be careful. The brain is something you can’t check, just like that,” he said. “Obviously, (I have) no bruises, very safe, but when you roll like that, you’ve got to be careful with the brain.”

The brake failure, Pagenaud said, seemed to happen in an instant, noting he had no issues making the hairpin or navigating the kink as he tore down the track and lost more than 100 feet of elevation between Turns 2 and 4.

“That’s not something you should even think of. You should be focused on hitting your marks and going as fast as you can and braking as late as you can, so when it happened, it was the biggest surprise of my life,” he said. “When those moments happen, it’s survival mode. It’s crazy what the brain can do, and in those moments, you can slow down everything and do things you normally can’t do. I could see everything – every single millisecond of the crash. I know how many rolls I did and when the wall was coming. It’s just a matter of, ‘When is this going to stop?’”

Pagenaud: Turn 4 runoff 'unacceptable,' calls for 'big change'

Pagenaud noted the uncanny similarities between his crash and that of Michael Andretti, which happened in the same spot at Mid-Ohio 25 years ago, when Andretti clipped a wheel of a competitor while making a pass headed for Turn 4 and was sent careening into the inside wall before he flipped upside down, skidded across the track – just missing oncoming traffic – and then barrel-rolled multiple times through the gravel.

It’s something the 2016 IndyCar champion said shouldn’t be happening decades later. His issue, Pagenaud explained, is with such a steep embankment so close to the edge of the racing surface that, he said, led to his car taking flight.

“It’s going to be harsh, what I’m going to say, but it’s unacceptable for a track to have this type of escape,” he said. “That’s my opinion, but it should be everybody’s, honestly. You should never have a drop-off (so close) after the racetrack, because at high speeds, the car’s going to take off, and that’s what happened.

“You know when you crash there that it’s going to be a huge one. I could’ve gone straight, but I would’ve taken off as well, and who knows, I could’ve missed the wall and gone even further. So my choice was to try and make the corner, because I knew that was the worst place on the schedule to go off. That definitely needs a big change here, and I just don’t know why it hasn’t already happened.”

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IndyCar: Simon Pagenaud awaits medical clearance after Mid-Ohio crash