Luckily for Camara his Conquest team is one of the few ex-CCWS squads with a spare car. (LAT Photo)
Rookie Jaime Camara quickly got up to speed Monday at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway before quickly getting into trouble and becoming the first casualty of the month.
After running 218 mph on his fourth lap, Camara got low in Turn 1, lost control and slammed into the safety barrier backwards. He walked to the ambulance, complained of back pains and went to Methodist Hospital but was back in Gasoline Alley by late afternoon.
"I went into Turn 1 and turned in a little early and got below the white line. That wasn't such a good idea," said Camara, a former Indy Pro Series winner who sat out 2007.
"That's why I lost it and crashed. It was totally my fault."
The 27-year-old Brazilian, who took over the second seat at Conquest Racing when another rookie, Franck Perera ran out of funding, was feeling the affects of his high-speed accident.
"I'm a little sore and they wanted me to go to the hospital for a CAT scan to check my spine and lower body," he said. "Tomorrow I'll go see Dr. (Terry) Trammell to see if I'm OK to drive and I hope by Wednesday everything will be OK."
Most of the transition teams from Champ Car don't have spare cars prepared yet and Camara is lucky that owner Eric Bachelart is in the minority.
"We're OK because we've got a third car ready and it's not the end of the world but it sucks," said Bachelart, whose other driver, Enrique Bernoldi, passed the final phase of his test on Monday. "It was just a rookie mistake and it was a pretty big hit and Jaime is pretty stiff right now but he should be cleared to drive again by Wednesday."
Bernoldi became the 11th rookie to pass his test, while Mario Dominguez and Mario Moraes got through three of the four phases. They now must wait until the second week to continue. Bruno Junqueira, Max Papis and Davey Hamilton completed their refresher tests as well.
But, besides the first wall contact of the month, the other big story was Alex Lloyd.
Last year's IPS champion, who signed with Chip Ganassi but has been farmed out to the Rahal/Letterman stable for May, continued to impress and turned the fastest lap of the day at 223.033 mph. It's quite a jump from running 190 mph in the IPS cars but having Andy Brown as your engineer and Arie Luyendyk as your driving coach certainly makes things easier.
"It doesn't seem like a jump from 190 to 220 would be that much but it makes a big difference in what you do out there," said Lloyd. "These cars are on a knife's edge out here and in the Indy Light's car, the knife's edge was a little more blunt and you had room for error.
"Here your reaction times are so much quicker and I'm feeling good but this place takes a little getting use to. I'm just happy to have a lot of good people from Chip and Bobby."
Hideki Mutoh, Will Power and Oriol Servia were all over 222 mph, while teammates Graham Rahal and Justin Wilson topped 221 mph.
The veterans finally get on the track Tuesday for their first five hour practice period of the month.
