“Just can’t catch a break!” Benjamin Pedersen’s reaction to the Lap 1 chain reaction accident summed up the feelings of the AJ Foyt Racing team which saw both cars caught up in the multi-car crash at the exit of Turn 1 at the start of the Honda Indy Toronto.
Seven cars were involved with only Graham Rahal, who slammed Pedersen into his teammate Santino Ferrucci, was able to rejoin the field on the lead lap. Four of the seven cars, including Pedersen’s, were out of the race but no one was injured in the accident.
Pedersen’s gearshift mechanism was damaged so he could not get the No. 55 Sexton Properties Chevrolet in gear and was forced to retire.
“We had a really good start, made good progress on the cars in front of us headed into turn one and then there was unfortunately a crash in the exit of turn one and just had nowhere to go,” Pedersen explained. “Came to a stop to avoid it and then got hit from behind and that kind of damaged our gearbox when we weren’t able to get out of the gear that we were in, so an unfortunate ending. It was completely out of our control.
“Now a lot of cars were involved in that, so bittersweet and we had very good moments throughout the weekend where when we were able to get the car in the right window, we were actually very quick, sometimes within top-six pace,” he continued. “But we just struggled to be able to get the car in the window for the majority of the weekend, so the speed is there when the car is in the window.”