Schmidt Peterson Motorsport driver James Hinchcliffe has undergone surgery after his horrifying crash at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Hinchcliffe lost control going into turn three after a reported mechanical failure and hit the wall hard, the car briefly set on fire as the right hand side was ripped clean off and skidded down towards turn four.
Honda officials later stated that the incident was caused by a failure to the right front suspension and are investigating urgently before the Indy 500 starts on Sunday.
Thankfully, the Canadian was communicating with track officials after the incident but he did have to be helped out of his Schmidt Peterson Honda before being transported to the IU Methodist Hospital for further care.
Officials later confirmed the self-styled ‘Mayor of Hinchtown’ was undergoing surgery to treat an injury to his upper thigh where he was reported to be in a stable condition.
“Obviously we’re relieved that James is awake and out of surgery,” said Sam Schmidt, team owner of Schmidt Peterson Motorsports. “That’s the most important thing on our minds right now and we will do absolutely everything required to ensure a complete recovery.”
There is no word on whether Schmidt Peterson Motorsport are going to replace Hinchcliffe for the race or whether the entry is going to be withdrawn and Buddy Lazier – who failed to qualify for the race – could be drafted in as a first replacement.
This is just another in a long line of incidents this month at Indianapolis with Helio Castroneves, Josef Newgarden, Pippa Mann and Ed Carpenter all crashing heavily just in the last week.
All the previous incidents, with the exception of Pippa, were related to the Chevrolet body kits. If it is now found that suspension parts are also liable for failure around the high speed oval it could throw the race into jeopardy unless the rest of the testing this week is hopefully incident free.
