The much-ballyhooed IndyCar $1 Million Dollar Challenge at The Thermal Club began with a first lap, first corner crash.
To set the field for the 20-lap main event, IndyCar opted to go for a pair of 10-lap or 20-minute (whichever comes first) heat races that lock in the top six drivers with the added feature that the push-to-pass button would be active from the start.
The field started crashing as soon as the green flag came out as Romain Grosjean got spun into oncoming traffic and collected Rinus VeeKay while also forcing Will Power wide and to the rear of the field — something he would never recover from.
The crash began with contact from Scott Dixon.
“I haven’t seen the footage but I got hit under braking, really really hard in the back, and got spun,” Grosjean said. “It’s … who’s going to pay for the damage.
“We come here with no points on the line, do nothing wrong and the car is completely smashed. Yeah. This is not what I signed up to race IndyCar for.”
Grosjean also got physically aggressive with a safety official, which drew criticism from one of the legends of the discipline.
This is a non-points race in which each driver is paired with a multi-millionaire club member, who are racing amongst themselves using IndyCar stars as their proxy. The winning driver of the event splits a million dollars with the paired club member.
The event features numerous unique rules to reflect the exhibition nature of an event held in the Coachella Valley.
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.