Dale Earnhardt Jr. reacts to Sting Ray Robb scary IndyCar wreck

Sting Ray Robb was involved in a scary wreck on the final lap of this past Sunday’s IndyCar Series race at Iowa Speedway, slamming into Alexander Rossi and going flying through the air.

Rossi had slowed up as he was running out of gas, and Robb ran right into him coming out of Turn 2. His No. 41 Dallara-Chevrolet flipped twice and slid down the backstretch before coming to a halt on its top. Robb required assistance from the AMR Safety Team to get out of his car and was then placed on a stretcher. He gave a thumbs-up to the crowd before being transported to Mercy One Medical Center in Des Moines, where he was released later that day.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. got a look at the wreck and determined that nobody is to blame despite some wondering if Robb had enough time to avoid Rossi.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. discusses Sting Ray Robb wreck

“People were saying for Sting Ray that it was avoidable. There was a lot of criticism on his part like how do you not avoid this,” Earnhardt said on his “Dale Jr. Download” podcast this week. “… I don’t know. Rossi runs out of gas. I know the IndyCar goes flying in the air, flips and it looks traumatic, it looks crazy. Y’all remember when in NASCAR terms, this is basically [Ricky] Stenhouse just blowing up and Carl Edwards plowing through him at the start/finish line. Nobody was going after Carl because he couldn’t miss Stenhouse. Same thing.

“Sting Ray has a funny name so he’s an easy target here. But when I saw it, my initial reaction wasn’t like, ‘Damn, how did he run into him?’ Like, you heard onboard it sounds like the car starves for fuel. Knows it’s over and Rossi did a good job, didn’t change lanes or start driving around the racetrack. Or go up and down and make himself harder to miss but gets run over. … I wouldn’t give anyone a hard time. It’s just an unfortunate situation that nobody’s really to blame there.”

Sting Ray Robb released from medical center after scary wreck at Iowa Speedway

Robb, 22, is in his second full-time season in the IndyCar Series and first with AJ Foyt Racing. He sits 21st in the points standings through 11 races.

Ed Carpenter, also involved in the crash, said he felt Robb misjudged the situation as Rossi had been off the pace at the time.

“Alex was off pace for a couple of laps,” Carpenter said. “I saw that, my spotter told me, I figured he had a fuel problem or some problem. It just looked like Sting Ray had to have seen that he was going slower. To me, it just looked like he misjudged the closing rate a little bit. They made contact and then I was trying to get low to avoid that mess and spun.

“Really wasn’t going to be that bad. I slid into Alex and then Kirkwood spun and hit me and that’s when our crash got worse.”

Earnhardt did have questions about what kind of protection Robb had during the flip.

“The driver is in there. There’s a sort of foam padded u-shaped thing that goes down around their heads,” Earnhardt said. “But I don’t know whether — I know that it’s all probably scienced out for right siding the thing at Indy. And stuff like that. But what kind of protection does he have in these types of hits? Very uncommon hard landings and that is what I was worried about is what kind of injuries might he get from this type of a flip where this car is hitting the ground in a very unnatural way. And a really hard way as well. So, I was a bit concerned about that, but it’s good he’s doing well.”