Make wishtv.com your home page

IndyCar spotter recounts Castroneves crash

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — IndyCar driver Helio Castroneves returned to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway track Thursday after his spectacular crash Wednesday during practice.

Castroneves wasn’t injured when his car smacked into a wall, sending the vehicle airborne.

Driver James Hinchcliffe was behind Castroneves when it happened, and Hinchcliffe’s spotter, Bob Perona, was above in the grandstands.

“I just shout, ‘get low, get low, get low,’” Perona said.

Perona and the other spotters are the eyes in the sky for their team. They make sure the drivers know what’s going on around them.

“It can happen to any car at any time really,” he said. “Fortunately, it was enough ahead of us that it really wasn’t that big of a deal for James to get down and avoid it.”

Perona said he’s glad all the drivers made it out all right, and he’s happy his team’s car wasn’t damaged.

“We’d hate to tear up our Indy stuff right now,” he said. “We’ve got a pretty good car and it’s looking good for us. You hate to get caught up in somebody else’s wreck.”

A YouTube video of the crash had more than 570,000 views by Thursday evening.