Alexander Rossi, Kyle Kirkwood sound off on pitlane contact, ensuing penalty, blame game

Alexander Rossi arrived at a race track for the first time in 2023 and couldn’t help but chuckle. Whether it be happenstance or a sly joke by the series (or something in between), the pit box for his new No. 7 Arrow McLaren crew was situated immediately next to his old ride of seven years — Andretti Autosport’s No. 27 Honda.

With the loss of Napa Auto Parts sponsorship in Rossi’s exit (and the blue that came with it), the No. 27 Honda is as pink as ever, and it was hard to miss for Rossi, the seven-year Andretti veteran, as he strolled into The Thermal Club in February.

It was even tougher to miss Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway, in the worst of ways.

You probably know about it now, the news cycle that keeps on giving as IndyCar sits in neutral for a week before it again heads west for the Grand Prix of Long Beach. During their first pit cycles not even a quarter of the way through Sunday’s PPG 375, Rossi entered pitlane on Lap 51 sitting 5^th — the place in which he qualified — thoroughly enamored with a car and a team he’d admired from afar on super speedways in recent years.

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His crew throws on four new Firestones, fills up with fuel and he’s signaled to head out of the box by crew chief and right-front tire changer Todd Phillips.

“And the next thing I know, the pink AutoNation No. 27 Andretti Autosport car is in front of me, on top of me and then stopped sideways,” Rossi said Thursday, going in-depth on the pitlane incident on ‘Off Track with Hinch and Rossi’, the podcast he shares with longtime friend James Hinchcliffe. “I’m obviously pissed off at Kyle (Kirkwood), which I think is rightfully so. You, James, have driven this car before. We don’t have a blind-spot detection system. We don’t have side cameras. We can pretty much see in front of us and a little bit beyond to the right and left of our tires, and that’s about it.

“The rest, you’re relying on people on you pit stand, your spotter, and then other drivers just to not hit you.”

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What followed across the final segment of the show was Rossi’s first thorough public reaction to his latest disappointment at Texas Motor Speedway. With a car he thought was every bit as good as teammate and eventual runner-up Pato O’Ward, Rossi finished seven laps down as his No. 7 crew had to work furiously in the pits following the contact with Kirkwood to repair and replace parts of his right-front suspension, as well as his front wing. To make matters worse — and the segment of the whole incident that inflamed Rossi the most — Rossi was then handed an “unsafe release” penalty from IndyCar race control following the group’s review of the contact with Kirkwood.

Post-race, without alerting Rossi as or after the change was made, race control then changed Rossi’s penalty, for which he served a drive-through, to “contact with another car” — implying that it was Rossi’s sole responsibility to avoid the contact, rather than the fault of his team for releasing him from the pits at an unsafe moment.

Rossi said on the episode he learned of the change on Twitter.

“That’s really even more of a kick in the (expletive),” Rossi said. “I don’t know what happened. I didn’t get a phone call explaining what happened. It’s hilarious. It went from being an ‘unsafe release’ where three people are involved to ‘Alex should see Kyle coming and Alex (expletive)-ed it up.

Added Hinchcliffe, in his second year as part of NBC’s booth: “I don’t understand that. Why are they digging themselves a hole here? The penalty has already been applied. (Alex’s) race is already ruined. Everything’s already happened. People are mad, so by retroactively changing the penalty, what did we accomplish with that? I’m so blown away by this.”

Kirkwood: 'They made the mistake. It's on them'

As it happened, the bulk of the conversation on Twitter, as well as from those in NBC’s booth, tended to heave the blame onto Kirkwood’s shoulders for turning straight from the outer “fast lane” left into his pit box and not using the middle “transition lane” for any part of his pit entry.

“That’s 100% Kirkwood’s issue,” Hinchcliffe said at the time on the broadcast. Later, Kirkwood would note the former Andretti Autosport driver came up to him after the race to apologize for how the broadcast handled the situation and doled out blame.

Upon further review of the rulebook, there is no specific line anywhere that details at what point drivers should begin making their way left and how many — if any — boxes worth of running at the pitlane speed (60 mph at TMS) they should run in the middle lane before dipping into their box. And after rewatching overhead footage of Sunday’s broadcast, it’s clear a relatively quick left turn toward one’s box without running at all straight down the middle lane was a frequent move.

At times, drivers might make a less-sharp jerk of wheel toward their box when there were no cars pitted behind them, and in one instance, Alex Palou was shown during his second stop actually running down a section of the transition lane, but he was by no means in the majority.

For Kirkwood during the eventual contact, each of the three cars with boxes behind his (Rossi, Scott Dixon and Palou) were all pitted as Kirkwood rolled down the right lane.

“I see Dixon and Palou ready to (leave) and their guys ready to send them, and those are the ones just before my pit box, so those are my targets. They’re sending them, and I’m trying to get behind them so I can fall into my pit box, and as I’m doing that, they also sent Rossi, who I couldn’t see at the time,” said Kirkwood on a Twitter Spaces show earlier this week. “I didn’t know they sent (Rossi). I knew nothing, and then all a sudden, I feel myself get clipped.”

Interestingly, it’s clear from rewatching video of the incident from Kirkwood’s cockpit that Rossi was clearly rolling out of his box before Kirkwood had passed it.

To Kirkwood, he wouldn’t have expected Rossi to have had any reason to see him. What he would expect, though, is Phillips or Rossi’s strategist Brian Barnhart (who followed Rossi from Andretti to Arrow McLaren this offseason) to have recognized that Kirkwood, though he was in the fast lane, was a car still waiting to pit and one with a box three ahead.

“It’s not like our pit box changed,” Kirkwood continued. “We were there all weekend. Ultimately, they made a mistake. It’s on them, and it cost (Rossi) his race. It was disappointing, but that’s part of tight pitlane stuff when you’re racing under caution."

“Usually, the outside-front guy sends you, unless it’s the next car coming into the pit box, and then it’s reliant on the strategist. He has to take over and say, ‘Hey, wait, wait, wait, okay, go!’ I don’t know if that call was made, but I assume it wasn’t. If there’s someone else coming in as we’re about to get sent out, (Kirkwood’s strategist Bryan Herta) would be the one that, even after you get launched (by the tire changer), you can pull the clutch back in and stop. It’s not like there’s no turning back. You’re going 5 mph. There’s time to stop.”

In a way, Rossi agreed, noting that a crew chief would typically only be in charge of knowing the car with the pit box in front of and behind their respective team in order to be aware of potential issues. Kirkwood was three boxes ahead, with a mostly pink car that, understandably, could be confused with either of the Meyer Shank Racing cars of Helio Castroneves and Simon Pagenaud.

'According to common sense, you don't hit cars'

Monday night, an IndyCar official emailed members of the media a detailed explanation of the rules used and how they were applied. According to the email, cars using the fast lane (as Kirkwood was) have the highest priority on pitlane, followed by those in the middle lane, and lastly, those in their boxes. It means that those attempting to run straight or attempting to navigate left have the right-of-way on those leaving their boxes.

Still, during most caution periods, there could be maybe two-dozen cars all trying to zipper in a running order that very well may not correspond to where their boxes are on pitlane. It’s a miracle, really, that more incidents like Sunday’s don’t occur.

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But even with those priority rules in mind, Rossi said he would’ve liked to have seen Kirkwood follow what the more senior driver called drivers’ ‘unspoken etiquette.’

“The transition lane exists for a reason,” Rossi said. “You don’t have to pit from the high lane.”

Said Kirkwood: “Ultimately, I’m worried about what (Andretti Autosport) has to say, and they came to me and said, ‘No dude, that wasn’t your fault at all. Don’t even think about it.’ So that’s the way I look at it.”

As Rossi pointed to, he had a near-incident on pitlane late in the race with Josef Newgarden where he was in Kirkwood’s role. The eventual race-winner had pitted and was leaving his box. Newgarden charged out, looking as if he was hoping to head straight to the fast lane Rossi was occupying while heading toward his box yet to make his stop.

Rossi can be seen on the broadcast hitting the brakes as their wheels — and nearly more — nearly touched. Newgarden then swerves ahead into the fast lane, and Rossi soon navigates into his box unharmed.

According to the rules, Rossi could’ve trundled on with the right-of-way, and had Newgarden made contact with Rossi, the former would’ve rightly deserved an identical penalty to Rossi. Theoretically, Rossi not braking and letting the collision happen could’ve helped attempt to seal the win for his teammate.

“I just made the conscious decision, ‘I’m not going to (expletive) hit a car today’,” Rossi said of the near-miss. “Kyle’s response is fine. ‘According to the rule book, I didn’t break any rules.’ Sure, that’s fine. But according to common sense, you don’t hit cars. Everyone else that pitted from the fast lane didn’t crash into someone, so that’s not the point.

“I still place the majority of the responsibility on the 27 stand and Kyle, but it wasn’t a malicious thing or intentional. I don’t think there was anything that was pre-meditated, but I also don’t think my team did anything wrong, either. It was a (expletive) combination of things that happened.”

On a separate post-race podcast, ‘SpeedStreet’ that Conor Daly shares with media personality Joey Mulinaro, the pair discussed the incident with Newgarden, with Daly and the race-winner ending up in various areas of what they both admitted is a tough situation to parse out.

From his vantage point, Daly didn’t feel as if Kirkwood had any responsibility to “stop in the middle of the road and wait for Rossi” while also calling it a “worst-case scenario” where responsibility ultimately rested on Rossi’s crew to be aware.

Newgarden, on the other hand, put credence in Rossi’s frustration with the time Kirkwood spent in the fast lane before his abrupt move left.

“I think if Kirkwood had (moved left earlier), then Rossi’s crew would’ve known, ‘I see this car is pitting soon’,” he said. “I think that’s why it materialized how it did, because of how long Kirkwood stayed in the fast lane, but it’s a tough one. That stuff can happen really easily.”

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IndyCar: Alexander Rossi, Kyle Kirkwood talk Texas pitlane contact