Verizon IndyCar Series team owner Michael Andretti says he told his driver, Alexander Rossi, to apologize to Andretti Autosport teammate Ryan Hunter-Reay for an incident early in Sunday’s Honda Indy 200 at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course.

The incident happened on lap 18 when Rossi and Hunter-Reay made contact with each other, sending Hunter-Reay into a spin. Hunter-Reay avoided any additional contact after the spin, and the racing continued without a caution period, but it dropped Hunter-Reay deep into the pack. He would fight back to an eighth-place finish -- just two positions behind Rossi.

After the race, Andretti pulled Rossi aside on pit lane and gave the driver some advice. Andretti generally spends his races in Hunter-Reay’s pit area but floats between his four teams that also include Takuma Sato of Japan and Andretti’s son, Marco.

It should be noted that Rossi is generally considered a very fair and clean driver in the series, and the team owner did not believe it was intentional. But when teammates have incidents during a race, the owner usually likes to correct the problem before it becomes a bigger issue.

“I just told Alex to go over and apologize to RHR,” Andretti told Autoweek. “He didn’t realize it was like that, but I told him it was so he needed to apologize. Alex would never intentionally do that. They will work it out and it will be fine.

“Ryan got spun and that screwed him. Then he had to save tons of fuel because he had to pit early. It could have been better but it’s the way traffic and things fell that messed some guys up. This is a track where it is very, very hard to get back with the leaders.”

When Andretti was an active driver, one of his longtime teammates was his father, Mario.

“Whenever I was in a race with my dad, I always lost a front wing,” Andretti said.

Rossi had a pretty good race and believes the incident happened because both drivers were on different tire compounds. Rossi was on the Firestone Reds -- the fastest and softer alternate tire -- and Hunter-Reay was on the harder, more durable Firestone Blacks.

“I just now saw the replay and I thought it was a 50/50 deal,” Rossi told Autoweek. “You never want to have an issue with your teammate. I would never do anything intentionally to hurt any car, especially a team car. Ryan and I will talk and we will work it out, get on with it and be working together for Pocono.”

Hunter-Reay has had a difficult season and is 12th in points. He was confident of having a decent race before he had to battle back after the incident with Rossi.

"We had a good race going today and the DHL team was going to be top five no doubt, until we made contact with (Alexander) Rossi,” Hunter-Reay said. “That set us back. We stayed at it and the boys did a great job in the pits all day. We were able to salvage a race that was going to be absolutely terrible and managed to keep it inside the top eight."

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io