Early retirement for Mike Conway from incident-filled Loudon IndyCar race

15 Aug 2011

British IndyCar driver Mike Conway was forced to make an early retirement from yesterday's Loudon race.

It was the IndyCar Series' first visit to the New Hampshire Motor Speedway since 1998 and Conway, along with his fellow drivers, spent Friday practice learning the track. The Andretti Autosport driver had a solid qualifying session on Saturday and was able to improve from P17 in first practice to P12 by the end of qualifying.

On Sunday afternoon, Conway lined his @followandretti car up on row six and the race went green. Heading into two turn, the rear of Conway's car got loose and snapped round; sending him across the track and into the inner wall. The damage sustained to the car was too great to continue and Conway was forced to retire from the race.

"I was taking it carefully at the start. There were a lot of people moving around out there and I was trying to stay in my spot. Heading into turn two on the opening lap, the rear got loose and snapped. I tried to recover it, but I couldn't. There was a massive cloud of smoke and it was hard for me to see the other cars and unfortunately I collected Rahal;" commented Mike Conway.

"It's really disappointing as the car had been handling quite well in qualifying so we were hopeful of making our way through the field during the race. I feel bad for the Andretti Autosport team because they worked so hard this weekend, but we will put this race behind us and move onto Sonoma in two weeks time and look to secure a solid points finish;" continued Conway.

Mike Conway heads to Sonoma on 28th August for round fourteen of the 2011 IZOD IndyCar Series.