Bell’s Late Crash Red Flags Indy 500

No, he didn’t win Sunday’s Indianapolis 500, but Palisadian Townsend Bell certainly affected the outcome of auto racing’s premiere event.

When Bell crashed in the second turn with 10 laps remaining, IndyCar officials decided to red flag the race. Coming out of the restart with the lead, Ryan Hunter-Reay outdueled Helio Castroneves over the final six laps to win by 0.06 of a second — the second-closest finish in Indy’s 98-year history.

Bell wound up in the same place he started, 25th place in the 33-car field. Driving the No. 6 Robert Graham-KV Racing Technology Chevrolet/Dallara/Firestone entry, Bell moved into the top 10 at around the 120th lap and got  as high as second before losing control of the car, which spun into the wall on Lap 191 of the 200-lap race, damaging the wall and littering the track with debris.

“I got hit in that three-wide on the restart in the left rear, which had already been damaged earlier in the race when I was inside of [Tony] Kanaan and he was squeezing me,” Bell said afterward. “The two incidents just damaged the car too much. It was loose all race and then in the end, I was just trying to go for it to see if we could get to the front. You don’t get those chances very often, but unfortunately the left rear just took too much pounding during the day to make it work and it got away from me. I hate to end that way. That was a pretty good hit. I’ll be pretty sore.”

Bell, a California native, was involved in an earlier wreck on Lap 176, when Ed Carpenter and James Hinchcliffe collided in Turn 1 after a restart when Hinchcliffe attempted to go three-wide. Bell’s car survived, but the other two were knocked out of contention.

Sunday’s race was run at record pace, the average speed of 211.871 miles per hour shattering the previous mark of 177.687 set last year. Hunter-Reay became the first American since 2006 to drink the milk in Victory Lane after passing three-time winner Castroneves on the last lap.

Bell, 39, competes full-time in the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship, driving for AIM Autosport with Ferrari, and is part of the Verizon IndyCar Series NBC broadcast team. He has made eight Indy 500 starts, including the last seven, with three top 10 finishes. He was fourth in 2009 (see chart above).