After making a rare mistake and causing a multi-car crash at Long Beach two weeks ago Ryan Hunter-Reay bounced back in style at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama on Sunday. IndyCar’s 2012 champion drove a perfect race on the Alabama road course taking the lead from pole-man Will Power when the Australian made a mistake on the 15th lap on a wet but drying track. Hunter-Reay dominated the race the rest of the way scoring his first win of the year and driving home the message that he will be very difficult to beat this year.
The message was made even stronger by Andretti Autosport team-mate Marco Andretti finishing an excellent second after an impressive drive from ninth on the grid. The Honda-powered Andretti cars thus scored a 1-2 as well as taking Honda’s first win in this year’s Verizon IndyCar Series. This was Hunter-Reay’s second win in a row at the Barber road course.
“This is what it’s all about,” Hunter-Reay grinned. “This is why we do it. What a dream to drive a car like that in conditions like that. Long Beach should have been a great result but we got it this weekend. It was a phenomenal race. I just had a blast out there today.”
The start of the race was delayed more than two hours after heavy rainstorms flooded parts of the track. Everyone started on rain tyres but the track slowly dried out and everyone switched to slicks in the middle of the race.
1. Ryan Hunter-Reay, Andretti-Honda
2. Marco Andretti, Andretti-Honda
3. Scott Dixon, Ganassi-Chevrolet
4. Simon Pagenaud, SPH-Honda
5. Will Power, Penske-Chevrolet
6. Justin Wilson, Coyne-Honda
7. James Hinchcliffe, Andretti-Honda
8. Josef Newgarden, SFH-Honda
9. Tony Kanaan, Ganassi-Chevrolet
10. Charlie Kimball, Ganassi-Chevrolet
“It was tough for everybody today,” Hunter-Reay remarked, “like ice-skating with sneakers. But my car was just great in the wet or dry. It was truly awesome.”
Andretti was delighted with his second place. “I didn’t have anything for Ryan but this was a heck of a team effort,” Marco said. “I didn’t have a radio so I only knew when to stop by following Ryan into the pits the next lap. It was a blind race for me and I just tried to keep my head down and hit my marks.”
Defending IndyCar champion Scott Dixon drove a good race to finish third chasing hard after Andretti in the closing stages. “The race was really fun,” Dixon said. “There was a little bit of puddling and standing water which made it pretty tough especially in the fast sections. At the start you just had to make sure to keep it clean and stay out of trouble. It was fun to race with Montoya for a while at the beginning of the race but at the end we burned the front tyres off and couldn’t do anything about Marco.”
Simon Pagenaud recovered from an early incident with Juan Pablo Montoya to finish fourth and move into third in points behind Hunter-Reay and Will Power. “It was very treacherous and very difficult to see in the opening laps,” Pagenaud. “But the car was super-fast. It was really good the whole race and the tyres really worked well for us. It’s a good start to the season.”
Will Power qualified on pole at the Barber road course for the third time in five years and looked a likely winner in the opening laps on a wet track. But he locked up under braking and slid off the road, brushing the tyre barrier as he regained the track. “Once you lock a wheel in the wet you just go straight,” Power said. “Man, I was lucky. I just missed hitting the wall there.”
As the track dried out in the race’s second half Power found himself less competitive and he fell back to finish fifth, retaining his lead in IndyCar’s championship. “I just didn’t have the pace in the dry,” Power added. “We were good in the wet but struggled in the dry.”
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Montoya enjoyed his most competitive race so far this year, qualifying eighth and getting up to fourth in the opening 20 laps. But he spun on a restart after everyone had switched under the yellow to slick tyres. As a result he lost a lap and came home 21st.
Next is the ‘Grand Prix of Indianapolis’ on the infield road course at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Saturday, May 10. This will be the first time Indycars have raced on Indy’s road course and it’s hoped the event will help bring back some of the flagging media and fan interest in the month of May.
The Indy 500 follows two weeks later and it looks like IndyCar will scrape together 33 cars for the big race – 18 powered by Honda engines and 15 by Ilmor/Chevrolets. Among the additional 10 entries expected at Indianapolis are 1995 500 winner Jacques Villeneuve, NASCAR star Kurt Busch and 2012 Indy 500 second-place finisher JR Hildebrand.
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