Takuma Sato has become the first retirement from the Indianapolis 500 after crashing out on lap 21. The KV Racing driver had been running on the cusp of the top 10 before sliding into the wall at Turn 2 in a relatively light impact.
Sato will be registered as the first official retirement of the race, but Simona de Silvestro (HVM) and Paul Tracy (Dreyer & Reinbold) had already been into the pits for attention after brushing the wall.
At the front of the field, polesitter Alex Tagliani fell from first to third at the start behind Scott Dixon and Oriol Servia, but worked his way back to the front by lap eight. The whole pack made their first pit stops under the yellow brought out by Sato's incident.
On the restart, Sato's KV teammate EJ Viso unwisely tried to go three wide into Turn 1 and also found the wall after colliding with James Hinchcliffe, who continued apparently unscathed.