The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Hinchcliffe back at Indy 500 with plenty riding on outcome
The self-proclaimed mayor of Hinchtown is back at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where he nearly lost his life in a horrific practice crash for the Indy 500 only to return the following year and lord over the 33-car field by winning the pole.
He is back walking the familiar steps under the shadow of the famed pagoda and taking the wellworn left-hand turn into Gasoline Alley. He is back to sliding into the cockpit of an IndyCar rather than the plush seat of the broadcast booth. He is back where he belongs, where he feels most normal, even during this most abnormal of years.
“It feels great to get back to my real job,” says James Hinchcliffe, the popular Canadian who lost a fulltime ride with Schmidt Peterson Motorsports after last season and is driving an extra car in Sunday’s race for powerhouse Andretti Autosport.
Hinchcliffe’s ease behind the microphone, coupled with his natural charm and good looks, has made him an instant hit on NBC broadcasts of IndyCar this season. It was a side gig that he picked up when his old team decided to field cars for Oliver Askew and Pato O’Ward, a pair of promising young rookies, something to the pass the time between his own races.
He signed a three-race deal with the Andretti team, and one of those happens to be the 104th running of the Indy 500.
It is a race at a track that has given some of Hinchcliffe’s highest highs and lowest lows. He nearly won an Indy Lights race at the famed Brickyard more than a decade ago, and he finished a strong sixth in his first run with Andretti Autosport in the 2012 race. Three years later, missed the race entirely when a piece of suspension failed, sending him into the wall at over 200 mph and impaling him on a piece of metal — the quick work of safety crews kept him from bleeding to death.
Hinchcliffe returned the following year to triumphantly win the pole, and his career again seemed to be taking off. He wound up seventh, parlayed his sudden notoriety and charisma into an appearance on “Dancing with the Stars,” and he won races each of the next two years to establish himself as one of the series’ top drivers.
But last year was a struggle for Hinchcliffe, who finished in the top five only once. He failed to crack the top 10 in the final points standings, lost his seat for this season and was left wondering what to do with the rest of his life.
The broadcast booth called. So did team owner Michael Andretti, who made him an offer to run at Texas and Indianapolis before the pandemic caused the entire IndyCar season to be shuffled around.
“It’s been weird. We showed up at St. Pete fully expecting not to race,” he said. “... But, hey, it’s not the weirdest thing that happened in 2020, so I can’t complain.”