Graham Rahal has lambasted Carlos Munoz following the latter’s move during the opening Verizon IndyCar Series event of the season around the streets of St Petersburg that caused a ten-car pile-up.
The move happened on lap fifty-seven on Sunday, with Munoz’s Andretti Autosport machine hitting the back of Rahal’s car at turn four, with the American immediately raising his hands in frustration as he faced the wrong way down the track with a damaged car.
The Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing driver lost a lap in the incident and eventually finished sixteenth, but Munoz was able to claim eighth despite serving a stop and go penalty for causing the collision.
“It’s because Carlos Munoz doesn’t have a brain,” said Rahal afterwards. “That’s as far as I can go.
“If you look at our times, and look at that last stint, we had one of the fastest cars today but what can you do when you get caught up in everybody else’s mess.
“I was looking to have a good restart and Munoz was brain-dead as usual.”
Rahal reflected on what he described as an ‘interesting’ day, but felt the team deserved more after having a strong car throughout the event.
“It was an interesting day overall,” said Rahal. “We struggled a little bit at the start but we started to get the Steak ‘n Shake car a little bit better mid-race.
“The race was over for us so we just tried to make the most of it and we did all right and passed four or so cars at the end, but it’s frustrating because we deserved better results. The whole team put a lot of work in and it’s a shame to have it go the way it did.
“If I look at our day as a whole, I think we had one of the fastest race cars, but when you get caught up in someone else’s mistake, there is just not much you can do.”
