Video of Simona De Silvestro Crash At Indy 500 Practice

The tweets alone made Simona de Silvestro's crash during Thursday's Indianapolis 500 practice sound frightening.  Then the Indianapolis Motor Speedway replay boards showed the wreck, confirming those fears:

Fortunately, it appears that de Silvestro escaped serious injury in the airborne wreck, as she was transported to Methodist Hospital with second degree burns on her left hand and minor burns to her right hand.  The Swiss driver was on just her seventh lap of the day when it appeared that something on the No. 78 car's suspension broke, sending her into the Turn 3 wall and airborne through the shortchute betweens Turns 3 and 4.

The 2010 Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year, de Silvestro remarked to reporters yesterday just how excited she was to be back at Indianapolis and on ovals:

You know, last year it was a big eye-opener for me. It was - when you look at it on TV, it looks kind of easy but it's definitely not. It's completely a different art of racing, you know. Yeah, this year I have a new engineer, Brent Harvey, who has had a lot of experience on the ovals, so it gives you as a driver a little bit, it gives you a little more confidence because you kind of know what he really is talking about. You know, I had fun last year on the ovals, you know, when it was going well, it was a lot of fun. So I really hope we're going to have a couple of good races on the ovals here and especially here at Indy.