Last year in the closing laps of the Indianapolis 500, Ryan Hunter-Reay had put himself in position, right behind Tony Kanaan ready to pounce. Then everything changed when the caution flew. The race ended under yellow. Kanaan got the win while Hunter-Reay got third.
“Last year was very close,” Hunter-Reay commented. “To lose to T.K., I watched the replays on ESPN Classic, to see how close he’s come so many times. Things just happen. That’s this race.”
This year, the pieces fell together for Hunter-Reay.
A caution would come out with 10 laps to go for Townsend Bell wrecking, setting up a six lap dash to the checkered flag. In the final six laps, Hunter-Reay and Helio Castroneves traded the lead back and forth with Hunter-Reay grabbing the lead heading into turn one on the final lap for the final time.
“The fact that I was racing Helio and Marco (Andretti), I knew there was going to be no funny business,” Hunter-Reay commented. “We were going to race each other hard, take our line, stick to it. There wasn’t going to be an unexpected move at the wrong time or something sketchy. Marco and I went close there going into turn three. We respect each other a lot on the track.
“It was good, close racing. I knew last night before I went to bed I was going to have to battle one of my teammates to get this thing, to get through them. For sure we probably had the strongest cars out there. It was close racing, but all fair.”
The Florida native was then able to hold off Castroneves’ final charge for the win to score his first ever Indianapolis 500 victory.
When the red flag came out to clean up the debris from Bell’s wreck, Hunter-Reay admitted that he was nervous that he would be lose the race as he did the previous year due to circumstances.
“The reason why I thought that is because you don’t want to be the leader on a yellow,” Hunter-Reay commented. “Please go green. Let’s go green the rest of this thing. I was looking forward to that. We had a great racecar.
“It went yellow, and then red. We were sitting in pit lane, had time to think about everything. Here I am the leader again. Did my best not to do what we did last year, which is lead at the wrong time.”
Michael Andretti quickly calmed his driver, saying the red flag was an omen as the last time they sat under yellow, Hunter-Reay won the championship.
“This is what I’ve dreamed of since I was a little kid,” Hunter-Reay expressed. “The championship is right next to this win. This one is probably on top of that.”
Hunter-Reay recalled going to races with his dad and being fascinated by the spectacle that Indianapolis is.
“This is the biggest one, this is the granddaddy of them all. This is where drivers were made and history is made,” he commented. “To even have a shot at it, to just come down pit lane, you know, giving these guys five that I looked up to throughout my career. When I was a kid, I looked up to the Andrettis, I looked up to Foyt, Unser, Mears, it was always trying to get there. That was the top right there.
“Just to have a shot at it like this is unbelievable.”
Hunter-Reay becomes the first American to win the race in eight years and while most Americans have gone the NASCAR route, Hunter-Reay says for him when both came up, he chose open-wheel immedaitely.
“We do battle on every different type of discipline, short ovals, street courses, the only series in the world like that,” Hunter-Reay commented. “The Verizon IndyCar Series is a true drivers championship. That’s what I love most about it.”
Now with the Indianapolis 500 victory, it continues to add to the success story at Andretti Autosport after winning the championship in 2012. To think the whole thing started with a one-off deal in 2010.
“This is the opportunity of a lifetime. I was bouncing from team to team to team. I had to make it happen in a short amount of time, pressure-packed circumstances,” Hunter-Reay recalled. “We won our second race together at Long Beach. It’s just a fantastic, fantastic story.
“You can’t do it alone. You absolutely need a team behind you. You also need people that believe in you when the days don’t go right. That’s this guy over here. I have him to thank for making my IndyCar career a possibility this way.”
