Jim Ayello

jim.ayello@indystar.com

INDIANAPOLIS -- Charlie Kimball needed to know. What happened in Turn 4 on Lap 1 at Long Beach? Whose fault was it? Could it have been avoided? What could he have done differently?

The Chip Ganassi Racing driver sought answers from anyone and everyone. He asked his crew and his race engineer. He talked to team management, race stewards and to his fellow drivers.

The answers varied in detail, he told IndyStar this week, but most everyone he spoke with came to the same conclusion: The crash was not his fault. He concedes some of the opinions he sought might have been biased, but some suggested Will Power’s attempt to pass was misguided and left Kimball with “nowhere to go.”

Officially, IndyCar race stewards, including Arie Luyendyk and Max Papis, deemed the contact between Kimball and Power a “racing incident.” In other words, neither driver was at fault.

But that’s not how Power saw it.

The 2014 champion made his thoughts on the crash and Kimball clear after Sunday’s race, as he told autoweek.com that the man behind the wheel of CGR’s No. 83 car is “a big problem” and that “no one in the paddock likes racing him.”

It’s not the first time Power has made disparaging remarks about Kimball. The Team Penske driver made nearly identical comments after the two collided at Watkins Glen last season — an incident that severely crippled Power’s shot at catching eventual champion Simon Pagenaud in the points standings.

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Though race stewards deemed Kimball blameless in Sunday’s incident, Sunday isn’t really the problem for Kimball. The problem is Sunday at Long Beach, last year at Watkins Glen, the season-opening race at St. Petersburg. In three of the past four IndyCar races, he has been involved in significant incidents.

Before making contact with Power in Lap 39 at Watkins Glen last season, Kimball took contact from Graham Rahal in Lap 20. At St. Petersburg, Kimball clipped Rahal in the first lap of the season. The damage done at St. Pete wasn’t significant enough to cause either to exit the race.

The damage done to Kimball’s reputation after all of these incidents, however, might be irreparable.

“The difficulty of the situation for everybody is that typically, Charlie is the guy at the center of the situation,” said Rahal, a former teammate of Kimball. “At some point, that makes you wonder. Every weekend, he’s kind of the guy.

"I will tell you that I wasn’t that excited on Saturday night when I saw he was starting seventh," added Rahal, who started sixth at Long Beach. "I'm not going to name names, but other drivers who were qualified right around us had the same sentiment."

Power, who started ninth, declined to be interviewed for this story. Evidently, though, he feels the same way, as he called Kimball “the most dangerous guy on the track.”

In Kimball’s mind, however, he’s been a victim of circumstance, a rotten streak of luck.

And unfortunately, Kimball added, his incidents have involved a pair of IndyCar’s most charismatic and popular personalities.

“It’s a little unfortunate that I happen to be the common denominator in those two incidents,” Kimball said, referring to the first two races of the season. “It’s just a shame those two incidents happened back to back and have been with such well-liked drivers. And outspoken drivers.

“Yet Graham and I had a discussion after St. Pete, and we cleared the air and moved on. He publicly said that he did not blame me at all for the incident at St. Pete. But the fact that we go to Long Beach and I have an incident that’s contested, even though the stewards say, in their minds, it was completely a racing incident, it’s just unfortunate.”

Statistically, Kimball might be right about his cluster of bad luck. A look through the record books shows Kimball appears to be no more prone to accidents than the average driver. In fact, among the 13 current drivers who have made at least 80 IndyCar starts, Kimball ranks in the lower of half of those who have had races ended by crashes. He's at 10.7 percent (11 in 102 starts), tied with Ryan Hunter-Reay (15 in 140). Takuma Sato is No. 1 at 25 percent (30 of 120), with Simon Pagenaud holding the lowest rate at 4.5 percent (4 of 89).

By no means are these numbers definitive. A driver’s day doesn’t always end after a crash. For example, Kimball finished sixth after his incidents with Power and Rahal at Watkins Glen. Still, the above numbers are a rather large sample size — seven years in Kimball’s case — and they seem to indicate he is not involved in an unusual number of incidents.

But statistics are one thing. Perception is another.

"When you’re around Charlie, you need to understand there’s a likelihood — and again, I like Charlie on a personal level," Rahal said. "He’s an old teammate of mine — but you've just got to understand, there’s probably a good chance that there’s going to be something; some sort of contact in some way. It’s nerve-racking. I’m not going to lie about it. It’s what it is.

"There are others guys like that, too. This isn’t just a blame-Charlie deal. Look, Charlie is out there, he’s pedaling it hard. He’s with absolutely one of the best teams in the sport, and I’m sure there’s pressure to succeed. I know when I was with Ganassi, if I wasn’t winning consistently, I am not going to lie, I felt a lot of pressure. I felt like I was underachieving. And so there’s always pressure to succeed there, but ... this is racing, and we all battle together every weekend, respect each other and hope for clean, fun racing. But there are certain guys who make life a little more difficult than others."

Is Kimball one of those drivers? Some in the paddock clearly believe that's the case.

Whether the sentiment is true or not, one thing is for sure: Kimball will have to leave the upcoming races in Barber, in Phoenix, and a number of races after those, without incident to begin changing the minds of some of his fellow drivers.

Kimball said he doesn't much care what those drivers think. They're not really his concern. Kimball, who has one career win and six podiums, is more concerned with Chip Ganassi, his team and his sponsors, all of whom have stuck with him and believe in him, Kimball said.

"There are drivers in the paddock, frankly, who I would not go out and have a beer with," Kimball said. "At the same time, there are a lot of drivers in the paddock who feel I am a fair competitor. A fair competitor and a good person, and that barometer is one I hold very strongly to. I have done well on the race track, and I have been a successful and good ambassador for my partners and for my team."

Follow IndyStar reporter Jim Ayello on Twitter: @jamesayello; and on Instagram: @jimayello.

CRASH RATE

Here are the number of starts and races ended by crash in IndyCar, according to racing-reference.info:

Takuma Sato, 30 of 120, 25 percent

Josef Newgarden, 13 of 85, 15.3 percent

Graham Rahal, 22 of 148, 14.8 percent

Sebastien Bourdais, 11 of 92, 11.9 percent

Marco Andretti, 22 of 185, 11.9 percent

Tony Kanaan, 26 of 235, 11 percent

James Hinchcliffe, 10 of 91, 10.9 percent

Charlie Kimball, 11 of 102, 10.7 percent

Ryan Hunter-Reay, 15 of 140, 10.7 percent

Will Power, 14 of 142, 9.8 percent

Helio Castroneves, 22 of 250, 8.8 percent

Scott Dixon, 18 of 233, 7.7 percent

Simon Pagenaud, 4 of 89, 4.5 percent