Pole sitters Felix Rosenqvist and Alex Palou reigned supreme in the heat races for the $1 million Challenge at the Thermal Club.

The top qualifiers faced little competition and dominated their respective heats for today’s two 10-lap segmented main event.

The first sprint was hindered by an accident at the start involving contact between Romain Grosjean and Scott Dixon which also collected Rinus VeeKay.

Dixon rubbed wheels with Colton Herta and then contacted the rear of Grosjean’s car, sending him spinning and into the path of VeeKay – eliminating both cars. Christian Lundgaard also suffered minor damage in the incident and Will Power swerved to miss the melee and fell to the rear of the field.

The incident left Grosjean furious.

“I got hit under braking, really, really badly at the back and then the car spun,” Grosjean said in an interview.

“Who is going to pay for the damage? We come here with no points on the line, we do nothing wrong and the car is completely smashed.

Dixon incurred a drive-through penalty for the incident and finished the race in 12th place. He apologized for the incident.

“There was a lot going on, that’s for sure,” said Dixon. “I think initially Herta and I got into it, and then Grosjean went to the left – I thought he was going all the way to the left, which was going to open up the middle – but then, all of a sudden, he started to fade back to the right.

“And everyone stopped so early, a lot earlier than I thought we were going to, especially with the massive headwind that we had going on.

“Obviously I don’t want to collect anybody and I apologize to anyone who was collected in that incident. It was all going on in a short space of time, so sometimes it happens unfortunately.”

Advancing in Group 1 were Rosenqvist, Scott McLaughlin, Josef Newgard, Christian Lundgaard, Augustin Canapino and Colton Herta. Progressing out of Group 2 were Palou, Marcus Armstrong, Graham Rahal, Linus Lundqvist, Pietro Fittipaldi and Alexander Rossi.