Rossi was circulating amongst a drawn out pack of cars during Practice 7 when his #20 Ed Carpenter Racing car spun through Turn 2.
The car collided with the outside SAFER barrier heavily, before also being hit by the #5 of Pato O’Ward.
During the following episode of the Off Track with Hinch and Rossi podcast, Rossi detailed the suspected cause of the incident.
“It’s kind of the lamest way to crash, but we were fuel saving, and the way that the packs work in practice is everyone’s quite nice to each other because you’re trying not to hang anyone out,” explained Rossi.
“In a race, the cadence and the flow is a lot faster and more aggressive, and so when you’re in practice, you can kind of get these big check-up effects and kind of this situation happened going into Turn 1 and this was like the second lap of it.
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“My previous lap was a 207 mph lap, so that goes to show how kind of big the check-ups were and this lap was kind of starting out in the same vein.
“The cars don’t work at that speed, I know it sounds counterintuitive, but there’s a perfect window where the car’s working well.
“If you go above that, you’re obviously going to have problems, and if you go below that, I guess in some situations, you also have problems.
“So, it was actually a crash because we were going too slow in dirty air, because it was about 20 mph slower than I had gone through there in practice on Tuesday with the same car.”
Rossi commended the safety of modern IndyCar machines, and then confirmed that the cast would come off his right foot well ahead of the race.
“It was one of those incidents where you’re just blown away repeatedly by the safety of IndyCar and all of the advancements that they have made,” Rossi said.
“Considering some of the forces that went on in the first impact and then the secondary impact with Pato, the fact that there’s no head, shoulder, neck issues and the only thing that we’re dealing with is a very small bone on the inside of my ankle, which this very large club foot [cast] will come off tomorrow.
“So this all looks very dramatic but you basically can’t be weightbearing for this process while they try and control the swelling.”
Rossi noted that if the cast removal process runs smoothly then he should be ready for Carb Day, however joked that the weather forecast looks less than ideal.
“Assuming when they take that off it’s as expected, then Carb Day – well I mean it’s going to be wet – so we’ll see you all on Sunday,” Rossi added.
The 110th running of the Indianapolis 500 is set to commence at 2:45am AEST on Monday May 25, and can be viewed on Stan Sport.
Rossi is due to start from second position alongside pole-sitter Alex Palou for Chip Ganassi Racing, and Team Penske’s David Malukas.
Indianapolis 500 – How to watch, schedule, starting grid & more
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