Hunter-Reay snaps skid at Detroit GP
Andretti driver last won in August ’15
DETROIT – For the last three years, the close calls have haunted Ryan Hunter-Reay. They festered in the back of his mind, living with him at every race weekend.
Ask him about how close he’s come to putting an end to that pesky winless drought, and he can rattle each of them: Pocono 2016. Indianapolis 2016. Long Beach 2017. Indianapolis 2017. Detroit 2018 (Dual 1).
There are others, but now HunterReay need not worry about them as much. On Sunday, the longtime Andretti Autosport star put an end to his 42-race winless streak by claiming victory in Dual 2 of the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix.
“I was hoping for better than we were. But it was close,” Hunter-Reay had said Saturday after finishing second to Scott Dixon in the first of two weekend races at Belle Isle Park. “We’re going to have to go back and try and make our weaknesses a little bit stronger tomorrow and see where we can come out.”
Hunter-Reay’s sprint to the top of the podium, and to a celebratory dip in the famed Belle Isle fountain, was a thing of racing beauty. He posted the nine fastest laps of the day and later conceded that it was probably the second-best performance of his career.
Despite the excellence of HunterReay and the No. 28 DHL car, Sunday nearly became another race that would haunt his memories.
His teammate, Alexander Rossi, also possessed a top-notch car and was wielding it well after nabbing the pole position Sunday morning.
However, Hunter-Reay wasn’t going to let this win slip away. Not when he was this locked in. Not when he had a car this fast.
In the final stint of the race, HunterReay trailed Rossi by as many as 10 seconds. He briefly thought the day might have been lost, but his engineer assured him he could catch Rossi by the end of the stint.
That’s precisely what he did. With fresher tires, Hunter-Reay stalked his prey, closing in second by second until his front wing was nearly on top of Rossi. He was applying pressure, creeping closer, hoping his young teammate would crack under the pressure and leave him an opening so that he could maneuver around.
Instead, Rossi unintentionally gave him all of the space in the world, as he locked up his brakes and skidded into the runoff area. Hunter-Reay went by and cruised to a checkered flag.
Whether Hunter-Reay would have been able to eventually work his way around Rossi is something we’ll never know.
Hunter-Reay thinks he probably could have, but frankly, it doesn’t matter.
With the victory, Hunter-Reay moves into fourth place in the championship, only 31 points back of leader Will Power.
Power, the newly crowned Indianapolis 500 champion, maintained the lead he brought into the weekend by finishing seventh in Saturday’s race and second on Sunday.
The podium was his fourth of the season and third in four races.
Following his podium finish, Power’s championship lead over his longtime rival Dixon is five points.
After seizing the championship lead following the first dual of the weekend, Rossi fell back to third (298 points) with after his 12th-place finish Sunday.