Romain Grosjean endured one of the heaviest impacts of the 2026 IndyCar season so far on Friday afternoon when the Frenchman slammed the turn-one wall head-on during Practice 2 for the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, bringing the session to a red-flag halt and leaving engineers with a significant repair job.
The former Formula 1 driver, racing for Juncos Hollinger Racing in the #18 machine, had spent the early part of the session complaining of poor grip and struggled to settle the car through the fast approach to the opening corner. On a lap that had already been interrupted by a Nolan Siegel off moments earlier, Grosjean got onto the aggressive inside kerb, pitched the rear of the car out of line, and found himself on the wrong side of what IndyCar analysts describe as one of the most unforgiving over-steer corrections on the calendar.
Without the power-assistance modern F1 drivers take for granted, the correction spat the Juncos Hollinger car off line and sent it nose-first into the concrete turn-one barrier, clipping a tyre wall and embedding the right-front corner into the armco.
"Oh, that's a big one," the Fox IndyCar broadcast reacted immediately. "Huge turn one. So deceivingly fast here. You've got to be so committed to find the lap time and just get it a little bit wrong. He talked about having huge struggles with grip earlier in this session. And let's take a look, on the brakes heading down into turn one – the car already starting to go on him, and then loses it over the kerb and straight in at the front. That's a horrible, horrible impact. Overcorrection. Fires him in right-front first."
The onboard footage was striking. Analysts pointed to the absence of power steering in an IndyCar as a major factor in how the incident escalated, with the French driver unable to catch a snap that would have been manageable in a grand-prix car. "No power steering in an IndyCar – we talk about that a lot," the broadcast team said. "It really affects how you have to manipulate the wheel on an oversteer event. Hope he was able to get his hands off the wheel. I don't know – I think he's trying to save it till the end. That's going to hurt."
The mechanics of the incident were telegraphed, the analysts noted. "Here you see he's coming in. He gets up on the kerb. He's already made a little correction, then as he hits the kerb, it really steps the back end out. And then it's just a classic overcorrection. So easy to do."
For Juncos Hollinger, the repair bill and the lost running time were a costly blow heading into qualifying on a track where track position is everything. The team has made Grosjean's rebuild a priority this season, with the Frenchman's experience seen as central to dragging the Indianapolis-based squad up the grid. Friday's shunt cost him precious knowledge of a circuit that has repeatedly bitten him since his switch from Formula 1.
Grosjean himself was philosophical after the session, saying simply that the crew would rebuild and the team would try again on Saturday. It was his second heavy shunt of the month, following an earlier off at Thermal Club, and another reminder that Long Beach's combination of 100mph braking zones and concrete walls continues to punish the slightest mistake, no matter how decorated the driver.
The 2026 Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach continues Sunday, with Felix Rosenqvist on pole and Grosjean likely to line up deep on the grid as a result of Friday's lost session time.
