Crashes plague IndyCar practice to kick off Milwaukee doubleheader
- Archie O’Reilly
- 5 hours ago
- 5 min read
The opening practice session of IndyCar’s doubleheader weekend at the Milwaukee Mile was headlined by a pair of accidents, including a hefty two-car crash.
Arrow McLaren’s Nolan Siegel first hit the wall inside the opening 17 minutes of the only practice outing of the weekend, before a coming together between Ed Carpenter Racing’s Christian Rasmussen and Andretti Global’s Kyle Kirkwood in the closing 25 minutes. All drivers walked away unassisted and were seen and released from the IndyCar Medical Unit.
DIVEBOMB unpacks an important 90 minutes of running on Friday, which saw the speed charts led by Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden…
A rare two-car practice crash
Both Rasmussen and Kirkwood’s crews have been left with significant rebuild jobs ahead of a busy Saturday - playing host to qualifying for both races and Race 1 of the weekend - following the pair’s highly avoidable collision in the latter stages of practice.
Kirkwood, who begins the weekend second in points after his victory in Washington D.C. five days ago, had moved to the inside of Rasmussen through Turn 3. But as Rasmussen turned into the corner seemingly prematurely, he made contact with and sent Kirkwood spinning, which led to himself being collected and sent airborne against the SAFER barrier.
“It wasn’t actually meant to be aggressive,” Kirkwood told the FOX broadcast of his inside move. “I was getting into some race running. He started to turn in really early and I don’t know if his spotter didn’t tell him I was still there on the inside or if he expected me to turn down early or what. It’s unfortunate. That’s not the thing you want to end practice.
“I want to dig into it more and really understand it. But from my point of view, he just turned in early, didn’t expect me to be running a normal line into there. He just tried to turn in and expected me to go narrower or something. So unfortunate circumstances.”
Aligning with Kirkwood’s theory, Rasmussen admitted in his own television interview that he had expected Kirkwood to turn down earlier from the second lane of the track.
“To me, it felt like he kind of never turned in,” said the Dane, who won in Milwaukee last year. “I was on the outside and didn’t feel like I turned in early, but I think his rear tyre probably touched mine. I don’t know. I didn’t feel like I could be much higher than I was.
“I need to look at it a little bit more. It was a little bit of a weird one because, to me, it seemed like he never really turned in. but really unfortunate because I think we had a really fast race car. Not obviously how we want to end our day.”
The duo reportedly shared a lift to the infield care centre in the same safety truck, though Kirkwood respectfully declined to comment on what words had been shared, suggesting: “I won’t put him under the bus like that.”
Meanwhile, in slightly less dramatic fashion, Siegel’s accident earlier in the session came in Turn 2 after the outgoing Arrow McLaren driver suffered a snap mid-corner, which sent him into a spin and caused damage to the rear of his No.6 machine.
“Totally caught me off-guard,” Siegel told FOX. “We were just on a quick baseline run and had a huge moment in the middle of the corner. So a little confused there. A huge shoutout to the crew; it’s a difficult stretch all back-to-back, got two races this weekend. So bummed to start on that note for these guys, but I have a lot of trust in them.
“We’ll get it back together and have a good weekend. We’ll catch back up. Obviously not ideal but we will figure it out and we’ll have a good day tomorrow.”
Newgarden makes “pretty good start”
It may have been a slight understatement for Newgarden to suggest the start to his weekend was “okay”. The two-time oval winner this season - with top two finishes in all three non-Indianapolis 500 oval races - topped practice with a 159.430 mph quickest average lap speed, with Penske having put emphasis on both qualifying mocks and long race runs.
Dale Coyne Racing’s Dennis Hauger placed a surprise second in the order with a late lap, becoming the only other driver to usurp the 159 mph mark. Chip Ganassi Racing (CGR) championship leader Álex Palou, who completed a field-high 90 laps, Penske’s David Malukas and Juncos Hollinger Racing (JHR)’s Rinus VeeKay completed the top five.
“We’ll see what tomorrow brings. It’s going to be a tough race. [But] it was a pretty good start,” Newgarden said. “I think we’ve done our homework for the most part. We should have something to fight with. We were all here testing so you have to lean on the tests a lot for what’s happening.
“The only caveat to that is the tyre difference - slightly different to the test - so you have to factor that into your decision making.”
Intended to satisfy a desire for more tyres, for practice only, teams were also granted a set of last year’s compound with which they were required to begin the session, though this move gained some mixed responses. CGR’s Scott Dixon described it as “a spanner in the works” that meant “everyone was very loose” and unable to get the most meaningful initial read.
“There was a lot of learning with the tyres because we had two different compounds, different ages to start, which is a big difference,” Newgarden said. “Feel like everybody was trying to figure out how to make the most of that. You have to adjust. You’re tuned into one, then you have to tune into the other.”
Milwaukee has been something of an outlier of an oval for Newgarden, who is yet to record a podium in his seven visits, spread from 2012 through 2015 and three races in the past two seasons, which included two retirements in 2024 and a seventh-place result in 2025. But he was blissfully unaware of and is unbothered by what the formbook suggests.
“We’ve had zero conversations about that,” Newgarden laughed. “It’s fun to drive because it’s flat. Unforgiving track if you get it wrong, which makes it challenging and exciting for drivers. It’s gratifying when you make a good car around here because it makes you feel like a hero. Can look good out front. It can be a very fun track if you get it right.”
Someone who does know how to get the job done in Milwaukee is Dixon, who won on the famed mile-long oval in 2009. The first two of his final three races with CGR will be run this weekend at the track where his quarter-century career with the team began in 2002.
“Stay out of trouble,” he said of the keys to winning at the venue. “The starts and restarts, having a car you can really trust… we saw that from Rasmussen last year. Didn’t really have straight-up speed, but he was able to be on the bottom, on the top, manoeuvre the car around quite easily. The working window is quite small.
“It’s definitely a very difficult circuit - difficult to win here, difficult to have a clean day. Obviously it’s double difficult with having a doubleheader as well.”
IndyCar will qualify at 11:00 ET (16:00 BST) on Saturday. Three of the top-five drivers in practice, Palou, Malukas and VeeKay, along with 10th-place Sting Ray Robb for JHR and 12th-place Scott McLaughlin for Penske, will take nine-place penalties for unapproved engine changes ahead of Race 1, which begins at 14:30 ET (19:30 BST).
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