India, Brazil and the USA will all have work to do for the feature race after a huge shunt at the start of the A1GP sprint race at Sepang.
As the field exited the final corner for the rolling start, the field appeared to slow which caught out American driver Marco Andretti – who slammed into the rear of Indian ace Narain Karthikeyan.
The American car got airbourne over the rear of the Indian machine and lost a wheel as it hit the ground, while Brazilian Felipe Guimaraes also went over the back of Karthikeyan – forcing the race to be stopped with debris littering the circuit on the start-finish straight.
"It was just a big bang," Karthikeyan said. "We were all going slowly just pacing ourselves. I don't blame USA, but I didn't think the lights went out. I was only in first gear. For sure, Mexico slowed down a little in front of me. I was just on Mexico's pace – whatever he did, I did basically."
Andretti, used to taking part in rolling starts in the IndyCar Series, admitted he was disappointed with the incident but said he hadn't expected the cars ahead to slow in the manner they did.
"You can say it's unavoidable but at the time I thought everyone was going and I could only see two rows ahead of me," he said. "I couldn't see ahead of the whole field. I was about to grab fourth gear, and as soon as the rear tyres were hooking up that was when I needed to be stopping the car so there was no hope. Once you are committed you are kind of stuck with it.
"In the States you either go or you don't. Here, they went, and then stopped. No one was to blame, it was just racing, but ultimately I crashed out two cars."
![The crash at the start of the Sepang sprint race [Pic credit: A1GP]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/511369.jpg)
