Doornbos disappointed by crash

The Newman/Haas/Lanigan driver damaged his primary car in an accident on Friday, and then spun his back-up machine into the Turn 2 wall during the warm-up practice prior to yesterday's Pole Day session.

While his team-mate Graham Rahal went on to take fourth on the grid, Doornbos had to sit out qualifying until today's second session, which decides places 11 to 22 in the line-up.

Doornbos, who had been consistently in the top ten in practice, said the crash had taken him totally by surprise.

"I have no idea what happened," he said. "I'm so disappointed. The guys did an amazing job getting the car ready. We had a good first outing. Everything felt good.

"We were just starting a run and the rear just went on me. I don't know what happened. It's disappointing because I wanted to qualify today.

"It was a big shock for me to realise that I'm not going to be able to qualify in the top 11 on my first Indy debut. But a lot of people cheered me up by saying that it's such a long race and a lot can happen. I know we have the pace, I know we have the speed."

The Dutchman added that he understood what had caused Friday's accident.

"We got into a nice rhythm again in practice and found ourselves in the top six," said Doornbos. "And then we just tried to simulate a qualifying run but that was a bit tricky with the other cars on track and it caught me out.

"I learned a very expensive lesson that you need to be really on your own to do a good comparison of qualifying and I was probably too close to the car in front, understeered, touched the wall and that was it. That was our day."

He admitted that he had probably been over-eager yesterday after his previous mistake.

"I slept a little bit bad wondering if it would be a good car but after the first run when we were straight away competitive I thought 'Okay, this is going to be a good day,'" said Doornbos.

"But then we just couldn't pace ourselves; we wanted too much, too soon and that was it."