Hunter-Reay shies away from ‘Lady Luck’
IndyCar driver says he’d like to be the one controlling fortunes
Ryan Hunter-Reay would rather Lady Luck just leave him alone. That’s because every time she stops by for a visit these days, she has nothing nice to tell him.
Hunting down a podium at Long Beach? Well, here comes a fluke electrical issue to derail your day.
Starting to feel good about yourself at Texas? Well, guess what? You’re about to get swept up in a crash you didn’t cause.
Have a car capable of winning your second Indianapolis 500? Not anymore, because your engine is about to fail. Oh, and just a re--
minder, this is a double points race, so your championship dreams just evaporated. … Have a nice day.
Time after time, week after week in the Verizon IndyCar Series, Hunter-Reay has found himself on Lady Luck’s naughty list, and he’s not sure what he has done to deserve it. So he’s making a request: Just leave me alone. To be clear, he’s not asking for a reversal of fortune. He’s not hoping his luck changes. He just wants to race unimpeded by any luck at all.
“I’ve been around racing for a while, and I have had good luck, bad luck, but I’d prefer to have just none at all,” Hunter-Reay told The Indianapolis Star, chuckling at his own misfortune. “I would just like to be in control of my own result. That’s all I want.”
Doesn’t seem like a big ask, but it’s racing, Hunter-Reay said, and sometimes ... stuff happens.
He knows that better than most. This is not the first time Lady Luck has turned on him. In fact, Hunter-Reay seems to have been on the receiving end of her scorn pretty often throughout his career.
“He has, unfortunately, more experience being disappointed with bad luck, bad circumstance, than a lot of other drivers of his caliber,” former IndyCar driver and NBC Sports Network analyst Townsend Bell said. “It just feels to me like he’s had a majority of his seasons compromised by bad luck and circumstance.”
Fortunately, Hunter-Reay has become well-versed in dealing with that disappointment.
Hunter-Reay’s saga of perseverance is well-known throughout the IndyCar world, but the short version goes something like this: More than once in his career, it appeared that despite his obvious talent and desire, circumstance would keep him out of an Indy car.
He won races as an Indy car rookie and sophomore, but in a floundering CART series that folded after his third year. He then found himself out of openwheel racing altogether in 2006 with seemingly little chance of returning.
But when a 2007 midseason opportunity opened up with Rahal Letterman Racing, HunterReay capitalized. He drove well enough with RLR to parlay it into a ride with Tony George’s Vision Racing, then eventually turned that into his dream job with childhood hero Michael Andretti. Along the way, there were numerous occasions where HunterReay easily could have called it quits, and no one would have blamed him. But he never did. “I feel like he has proven his ability to knuckle down and, despite bad luck, has figured out (how) to turn it around so many times before,” Bell said. “And that resiliency and belief in his ability is what got him to the position he’s in in IndyCar. He’s a 500 winner, a champion, has a longterm contract with a top team, and he’s considered one of the very best in the sport.”
That’s exactly what he plans on doing this season. While it’s too late to do so in the championship, well, the championship doesn’t matter anymore.
“I haven’t even looked at that in weeks, because I honestly don’t care,” Hunter-Reay said. “We’re past that point now. With (not finishing at) Indy, that was too big a hit, and there’s been too much misfortune in one season to concentrate on points. It’s all about wins now.
“Wins and getting ready for next year; that’s it.”
Hunter-Reay said he’s optimistic heading into this Sunday’s race at Iowa Speedway (5 p.m. ET, NBC Sports Network), not only because he has won there three times but because it’s a place where he once turned a bad season on its head.
In 2015, Hunter-Reay endured a season that was just as frustrating as this one. But once again, he found a way to persevere. He not only scored his first podium of the season at Iowa, he won. Two races later, he won again at Pocono, then finished second at the season finale in Sonoma, catapulting himself from 14th in the championship to sixth.
“You just have to pick up and move on to the next race, then the next year,” Hunter-Reay said. “We’ve got a great package behind us. We’ve got a great program. That’s what keeps driving me. I’ve been in very, very difficult positions in the past in my career and in races, and we’ve overcome them. Those experiences stay with you, so that’s what we’re going to do.”