Romain Grosjean has conceded his engine failure during practice at the Children’s of Alabama Indy Grand Prix is ‘not ideal’ with teams ‘tight’ on parts this year.
IndyCar drivers are limited to four engines for the season with each required to run approximately 2,500 miles before they are switched out.
Should this figure be exceeded then sanctions begin to be handed out with drivers facing grid penalties and engine manufacturers at risk of being docked championship points.
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On Friday, Grosjean’s session was over on his 10th lap as the right-hand side of his Honda engine expired.
Asked how much this would set back his weekend, Grosjean said bluntly: “A lot.”
“But not only for today, we’re also tight on engines for the season and that one had to do a full race before we were going to change it.
“It’s clearly not ideal. It’s motorsport, it happens, so we are all going to look at what we can do better to avoid that.
“We tried to push it to the maximum, getting all of the performance out of it but this happens.
“The good news is that I’ve got team-mates out there that are fast, so I’m just going to rely on what they do and what we can learn from the session.”
Grosjean’s Andretti Autosport team-mates Colton Herta, Devlin DeFrancesco and Kyle Kirkwood finished second, 16th and 22nd in the 75-minute practice.
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