INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Alexander Rossi wasted no time offering a blunt critique of how race officials reacted to his stalled car during Saturday's Indianapolis Grand Prix.
Naturally, he was upset the No. 20 car wound up parked next to the concrete wall near Indianapolis Motor Speedway's famed yard of bricks. What really irked him, though, was waiting another lap for a full-course caution to come out.
IndyCar Officiating heard the complaints and responded Tuesday by announcing the series would no longer consider race order or pit window status to determine whether to employ a full-course yellow or a local caution.
Drivers almost universally lauded the move, just hours before their first Indianapolis 500 practice.
“I was surprised it took so long to be thrown,” Marcus Armstrong of Meyer Shank Racing said Tuesday. “But there was also debris on the track at the time on the race line, which is what they threw the yellow for at Long Beach, so I thought a yellow would be thrown for that. Not sure why it wasn't, but I think it should be totally yellow when there is danger for drivers. Rossi trying to jump out of his car — safety needs to be the priority.”
The rule change won't impact the Greatest Spectacle in Racing, scheduled for May 24, because there are no local yellows on ovals.
But it's intended to avoid a repeat of Saturday's scary scene when Rossi climbed out of his cockpit and across the wall separating the racetrack from pit lane before walking to his pit stall. Rossi waited for the full-course caution to come out and when it didn't the 2016 Indianapolis 500 winner, who now drives for Ed Carpenter Racing, left nobody guessing about his thoughts.
"It's pretty annoying to have failures on the car because of a product that we didn't ask for, that doesn't improve the racing, so that's frustrating," Rossi told Fox's pit reporter. “Second, the fact it took that long to throw a full-course yellow when a car is on the front straight, people are going 175 mph, also seems insane when they didn't let us run in the rain (Friday). So I don't know where the priorities lie.”
The series' Independent Officiating Board tried to clarify what happened Tuesday, saying in a news release Rossi's car was out of the normal racing line and that Saturday's decision to throw a local yellow was based on a standard set of factors that included both pit windows and running order.
Moving forward, though, those two factors will not be used in the equation of when a full-course yellow is needed.
“The Lap 21 incident on Saturday made clear there needs to be a cleaner standard for how race control moves from a local to a full-course yellow,” said Raj Nair, the chairman of the new board. “IndyCar Officiating, with IndyCar’s full support, has made this change of approach to ensure that the only inputs to the full course yellow escalation are safety ones.”
It's the second rule change the series has made since the season moved to the historic Brickyard for May. But it's one everyone seems to believe is warranted.
“The most important job in race control is to ensure the safety of our drivers, crews, safety workers and fans,” IndyCar President Doug Boles said in a news release. “Saturday highlighted we must not waver from that central mission, and aligning everyone on that philosophy was critical to discuss over the last 48 hours.”
The drivers concur.
“I heard there was something that came out this morning," said Josef Newgarden, a two-time 500 champion who drives for Team Penske. "Every incident is different, but I think IndyCar has always tried to optimize the show versus safety and whatever they've tried to do, I fully support.”
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FILE - Alexander Rossi attends a practice session for the IndyCar Indianapolis GP auto race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Aug. 11, 2023, in Indianapolis. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings, File)
PARIS (AP) — A French woman infected in the deadly hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship is critically ill and being treated with an artificial lung, a doctor at the Paris hospital caring for the sickened passenger said Tuesday. The outbreak has now reached 11 total reported cases, 9 of which have been confirmed.
Three people on the cruise died, including a Dutch couple that health officials believe were the first exposed to the virus while visiting South America.
The French passenger hospitalized in Paris has a severe form of the disease that has caused life-threatening lung and heart problems, said Dr. Xavier Lescure, an infectious disease specialist at Bichat Hospital.
He said the woman is on a life-support device that pumps blood through an artificial lung, providing it with oxygen and returning it to the body. The hope is that the device relieves enough pressure on the lungs and heart to give them some time to recover. Lescure called it “the final stage of supportive care.”
With the evacuation of all passengers and many crew members completed, the MV Hondius is now sailing back to the Netherlands, where it will be cleaned and disinfected.
The director of the World Health Organization said confirmed and suspected cases have only been reported among the cruise ship's passengers or crew.
“At the moment, there is no sign that we are seeing the start of a larger outbreak,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director general. He added: “But of course the situation could change, and given the long incubation period of the virus, it’s possible we might see more cases in the coming weeks.”
The latest person confirmed to be infected is a Spanish passenger who tested positive for hantavirus after being evacuated from the ship, Spain’s health ministry said Tuesday. The passenger was in quarantine at a military hospital in Madrid.
Health authorities say it’s the first hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship. While there is no cure or vaccine for hantavirus, the WHO says early detection and treatment improves survival rates.
Argentina’s health ministry said Tuesday a team of scientific experts will be dispatched in the coming days to investigate the origin of outbreak.
A Dutch couple, identified by the WHO as the first cruise passengers infected with hantavirus, spent several months in Argentina and neighboring South American countries before boarding the cruise ship. The husband and wife later died.
Argentine officials have said the couple took a bird-watching tour that included a stop at a garbage dump where they may have been exposed to rodents carrying the infection. The health ministry said its team will investigate the landfill and other locations the couple visited where rats known to carry the virus are found, although local officials in the province where the cruise departed have challenged the theory it began there.
A total of 87 passengers and 35 crew were escorted from the ship to shore in Tenerife by personnel in full-body protective gear and breathing masks in a carefully choreographed effort that ended Monday night.
Two aircraft arrived in the southern Dutch city of Eindhoven overnight carrying Dutch nationals as well as passengers from Australia and New Zealand and crew members from the Philippines. All were placed into quarantine, according to the Dutch government.
Some crew stayed aboard the ship and set course for the Dutch port city of Rotterdam, said ship operator Oceanwide Expeditions.
Hantavirus usually spreads from rodent droppings and is not easily transmitted between people. But the Andes virus detected in the cruise ship outbreak may be able to spread between people in rare cases. Symptoms — which can include fever, chills and muscle aches — usually show between one and eight weeks after exposure.
WHO chief Tedros has advised that returning passengers should stay in quarantine, either in their homes or in other facilities, for 42 days. He added that WHO cannot enforce its guidance, and that different countries may handle the monitoring of passengers without symptoms in different ways.
Twelve employees at a Dutch hospital where a passenger from the Hondius is being treated have to quarantine for six weeks after improperly handling bodily fluids, Radboud University Medical Center said in a statement Monday night.
The “risk of infection is low” the hospital said, but was requiring the dozen employees to go into preventive quarantine as a “precaution.”
The hospital in the eastern city of Nijmegen received a passenger last week from one of the evacuation flights that landed in the Netherlands and the person has since tested positive for hantavirus.
Blood and urine from the patient should have been handled “according to a stricter procedure,” the hospital said.
Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia. Associated Press writers Mike Corder and Molly Quell in The Hague, Netherlands; Suman Naishadham in Madrid; Jamey Keaten in Geneva; Isabel DeBre in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Lauran Neergaard in Washington and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed.
From left, Executive Director of Sante Publique France Caroline Semaille, French Health Minister Stephanie Rist, Professor of Gastroenterology and Hepatology Yazdan Yazdanpanah and infectious disease specialist Xavier Lescure attend a press conference about the situation regarding the hantavirus, in Paris, Tuesday, May 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
An ambulance enters the Bichat Hospital where a woman who tested positive for hantavirus remains in intensive care, in Paris, Tuesday, May 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus gives a press conference at the Moncloa Palace in Madrid, Tuesday, May 12, 2026. (Carlos Luján/Europa Press via AP)
Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, left, and Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus attend a press conference at the Moncloa Palace in Madrid, Tuesday, May 12, 2026. (Carlos Luján/Europa Press via AP)
Passengers board a plane bound for Eindhoven, after disembarking from the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship MV Hondius at the airport in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, Monday, May 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Arturo Rodriguez)
The hantavirus-stricken cruise ship MV Hondius is seen at anchor at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, Monday, May 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Arturo Rodriguez)
