INDIANAPOLIS — Santino Ferrucci had a rather large setback on Thursday when he backed his No. 45 Honda into the Turn 2 SAFER barrier at 4:14 p.m. ET. The incident sent him to a downtown Indianapolis hospital for further evaluation including extra imaging on his leg. Luckily, Ferrucci was released from the hospital last night and was able to get back to the track to check on the status of his car. 

“We were just working on our race trim, trying a couple different things, and just more my mistakes,” Ferrucci said on Friday morning on what happened to spark his crash on Thursday. “Brandon has been doing such a great job engineering the car, the Hy-Vee car, and it’s been incredibly quick. We have been on top of the board yesterday after the last two days trying to figure some stuff out, and I should have pitted a lap before because it made some moves, and normally around here it’s not a very good sign. I was just trying to compensate with the weight jacker and see if I can adjust because you get the same conditions in the race.

“I just made a mistake following Takuma. I was really tight in 3 and 4, so I was getting a lot of understeer and then the car was really neutral. I think just the way I was trying to get runs off of and follow Takuma out of 2, it was just — I guess he sees the car moving more than I feel it, but it’s like that in the race car. It moves when you’re behind it. Even looking at other cars and watching T.K. in front of me before I passed him, you could see his car was moving. With the temperatures on the rise, it’s not uncommon. I do like a loose race car, and I think yesterday was definitely over the razor thin edge of this place.”

On Friday morning, the Rahal/Letterman/Lanigan Racing driver was cleared to drive again as he will be back in his car on Fast Friday. Ferrucci, spoke to us this morning on the plans now moving forward. 

“It’s one of those things where I think a lot of drivers that crash around here on their own don’t know why it happened and they don’t want to admit to why it happened,” he said of his crash on Thursday.

“I’m pretty confident I know what I did wrong, and I know how to fix it.”

Ferrucci said that to get him fully comfortable again, they’ll start the day off with race downforce levels and as he gets back more and more content, they’ll peel it off in stages. 

“By the end of the day, I have absolutely zero doubts that we’ll be back up at full speed with Graham and Takuma,” he continued. “The guys worked all night long. They’re going to work all morning. They’re going to work all night tonight getting the car where it should be for Saturday.

“I have zero doubts in this team. It’s an incredibly professional organization, the Hy-Vee crew, and it’s really nice to have the help of the 15 and the 30 crew. To see everybody come together and make it work, that puts a lot of confidence back in me knowing everything is back together correct the way it should be, the way it was.”

Bobby Rahal said that they had enough parts at Dallara to get this car repaired and ready to go like it was before. 

“Yeah, I mean, I think Dallara had the parts,” said the team owner. “Of course, yeah, you breathe on a car all year getting the body fit 100 percent, and we’re going to do everything we can to get it as close to the other cars, as Graham and Takuma’s cars, and I have no doubt that our guys between now and qualifying tomorrow are going to make sure that it’s as good. That’s just the nature of I think the people we have.”

Rahal agreed with Ferrucci that this afternoon is all about getting Ferrucci comfortable again. 

“I think as Santino said, this afternoon for him it’s all about getting back in the saddle and go through chunks of the list that he’s got,” Rahal continued. “And same thing holds true for Graham and Takuma. I’m expecting good things by the end of the day.”