Rosenqvist and Rossi had already swapped places through Turn 1 and Turn 2 with four laps to go, but on the penultimate tour they raced wheel-to-wheel again, this time at Turn 3.
Rosenqvist lunged to the inside, where Rossi pinched him towards the apex. After rounding the corner side by side, they touched – Rosenqvist’s right-rear to Rossi’s left-front – and Rossi was sent into the wall.
He then lost fourth place to Scott Dixon, who took advantage of his loss of momentum by driving around the outside of him at Turn 4.
Rossi, who had previously gained two spots when Will Power and Dixon clashed, said he was “happy with everything” but shut down a question about the incident with his team-mate.
“I think we got given those spots, kind of inherited second, and then ended up back where we started,” Rossi told NBC. “It was a good day overall, I think the pace was good the team did an amazing job with strategy, that was right. I’m happy with everything.”
But when pushed on whether it was good racing with Rosenqvist, he replied: “We’ll discuss it internally.”
Rosenqvist said the clash was a product of “tough racing” but admitted he’d rather not be doing that with a team-mate.
He explained: “I was on the inside and he squeezed me quite a lot on the first apex, so I had to run into him or I’d have clipped the left[-side] wall and on the exit it’s just you’re racing out of the corner, and I thought it was a fair bit ahead.
“He played it hard on entry and I played it hard on exit, so I think it was fair. We’ll discuss it, it’s never fun to do that with team-mates but if you race hard, you have to race hard back. So it’s all good.
“It’s always tough out there in IndyCar, I shouldn’t be ashamed of being elbows out, so I think it was all fair play. Obviously I don’t want to race team-mates too much, it’s never fun, but that’s the way it is.”
When asked if he would have a post-race chat with Rossi, he replied: “Yeah, for sure. If it’s something he wants to talk about, he was hard but fair, and I think I was the same.
“We never want to put each other in the wall or anything, unfortunately we’ve been around each other at every race this year, but that’s how it is when you’re racing at the front with Arrow McLaren.”
