Speaking on the latest episode of ‘Off Track with Hinch and Rossi’, Arrow McLaren’s Alexander Rossi says there is no hard feelings with teammate Felix Rosenqvist after a feisty battle in the closing laps of the Detroit GP.
It all kicked off with 10 laps to go as Dixon clipped the back of Power’s car in the battle for P2. With Rosenqvist having to go around the outside of the hairpin to avoid hitting the New Zealander, Rossi took advantage and overtook all three of them to move into P2.
“Scott, Will and Felix all got into each other on a restart, and I inherited those three positions,” said Rossi on what happened in front of him.
“It was looking like that was going to be easy to maintain and then there was another restart. It kind of got away from me a little bit.”
On the final restart, Power quickly cleared Rossi into turn 4 with five to go. Then it became a battle of the McLarens.
The Swedish driver made his move on the penultimate lap. As he had more push-to-pass available, he got a run down the inside into turn 3 and made an aggressive pass.
On exit from the hairpin, there was contact between the two and Rossi hit the wall. However, he escaped without any suspension damage and saw the chequered flag in 5th.
After the race, Rossi said to NBC he would discuss things internally with Rosenqvist — and he confirmed they did on the podcast.
The former F1 driver and Indy 500 champion had absolutely no problem with the aggression from the Swede, stating he would have done exactly the same.
“There was a lot of noise and a lot of drama that was created/trying to be created post-Felix and I’s run-in at turn 3. I don’t really understand it,” Rossi explained.
“Truly from my side, I don’t have an issue with what he did at all. I gave him a small door and he took every inch, plus maybe an inch or two more of it. [Rosenqvist] drove hard.
“I explained this to a friend of mine after the race, he was like ‘are you pi**ed’ and I was like ‘no dude, I race people like that’.
“You can’t get pi**ed off at people if they do that to you when you do that to them all the time.
“In the moment I was pi**ed that I hit the wall and I was pi**ed I lost the spot to Dixon. But like also in the moment it was like ‘I should have been 5th anyways’.
“I didn’t have any issue with it. Felix and I talked about it internally. It’s fine. There’s no problem.”
Photo credit: Penske Entertainment | Chris Owens
Saturday’s (or Friday in the case of the Indy GP) have not been particularly kind to Rossi since his switch to Arrow McLaren.
His qualifying struggles continued at Detroit as he was only P13. Although he admitted to a mistake on his fast lap, he believes it only cost him a couple of spots if he had got through to the Fast 12.
“We still suck in qualifying. There’s no ifs, ands, or buts about it,” Rossi bluntly added.
“I hit the wall on my quickest lap. But I’m going to be honest with you — I would have transferred and qualified 11th. We’re really bad on Saturdays and very good on Sundays.”
Sunday was much better again as the 31-year-old moved up from P13 to P5 in the race. Good pace and tyre degradation to the cars around them allowed the Mclarens to carve their way through the pack following a relatively disappointing qualifying with all three cars.
“It [Sunday] was kind of a recovery day. We had very little deg compared to others. Me, Pato and Felix all started on the primary tyre because we knew that without a doubt we could make the greens last. It was never kind of a concern for us.
“That was really the main reason why we had such a good day. We were able to make up time and track position in the first stint and other guys had to suffer on greens. When we put the greens on we didn’t have the falloff that the others did.”
Rossi sits P6 in points ahead of next weekend’s race at Road America. He’s now only 15 points adrift of teammate Pato O’Ward.
Photo credit: Penske Entertainment | Joe Skibinski
