Christian Rasmussen stood on pit lane at Phoenix Raceway with arms crossed and a disappointed look on his face. His No. 21 Ed Carpenter Racing Chevrolet went from 18th in qualifying to the front of the field five times and led 69 of 250 laps (four short of the race high). His aggressiveness caught the attention of other drivers in the field.
“Yeah, he’s just all attack,” David Malukas said. “Even when he was behind me for a few laps, I mean, I don’t know, I was defending. I came to the point that I’m going to stop defending this because I feel like we’re going to crash. He is all or nothing. He is all or nothing. It’s into the wall or I’m making that move. Obviously, that strategy works very well.”
In this case, he went into the wall with less than 50 laps to go.
On Lap 207, Rasmussen went to Will Power’s outside off Turn 2, battling for the race lead, when he hit the wall and damaged the lower wishbone and tow link.
“You can’t just run people into the wall, which was what happened today,” he said. “He ran me straight into the wall and after that I had damage.”
This changed the handling of his car and made it “just impossible to drive after that.” Suddenly, the strongest car in the race ran uncontrollably loose and Rasmussen lost the lead to Kyle Kirkwood with 10 laps to go. He sank like a stone through the field and finished the Good Ranchers 250 in 14th.
“I just did what I could to salvage today and I crashed a car, but just frustrating,” he said. “Man, so frustrating because we should have won the race today and obviously didn’t.
“We were the class of the field today. Best car out there. I was so happy with the car.”
Rasmussen leaves Phoenix 11th in NTT INDYCAR Series points.
