Hinchcliffe gets Indy redemption with Iowa victory
NEWTON, Iowa – The wound will never heal. Never completely. It will fester forever, and 2018 will always be the year James Hinchcliffe failed to qualify for the Indianapolis 500.
But that doesn’t mean Hinchcliffe is going to let that failure define him or even his season. In fact, since May, Hinchcliffe and the entire Schmidt Peterson Motorsports team have worn that disappointment as a chip on the shoulder.
They proved that Sunday afternoon at Iowa Speedway, as SPM provided Hinchcliffe with a rocket ship that he piloted into victory lane.
“I’m just proud, honestly,” Hinchcliffe said after his first Verizon IndyCar Series win of the year and second career victory at Iowa Speedway. “Proud of this group because something like what happened to this team in May can really get you down. That’s our Super Bowl. That’s our Wimbledon. That’s our Masters all wrapped into one. To miss it is a huge blow for every single member of the team.
“To not make it can very easily just get a group down and you can get despondent. You can kind of lose track of what the real goal is and lose motivation. But no one in this group suffered from that at all. If anything, it fueled us and made us want to perform better and push harder and work harder. We’ve come back strong.”
It became evident from the outset Sunday that there were just two cars that could win the race: Hinchcliffe’s was one; the other was Josef Newgarden’s.
The Team Penske phenom looked to have the Iowa Corn 300 on lockdown early in the race, as he weaved through traffic, lapping cars, 1-2-3 at a time. That came as no surprise, as Penske’s cars qualified 1-2-4 with Will Power on the pole and Simon Pagenaud starting on Row 2.
But it was clear from the beginning that Newgarden was the cream of Penske’s crop, and it didn’t look like anyone would have much for him — except Hinchcliffe.
The Canadian driver endured a mediocre Saturday that saw him qualify on the sixth row. Few predicted he’d have a car capable of storming to the front of the field, yet that’s precisely what he did. Within no time, Hinchcliffe had thrust himself into second place and began to stalk Newgarden.
Late in the race, Newgarden encountered a crowd of lapped traffic, and on lap 256 of 300, Hinchcliffe closed the gap and made his move, drafting up on Newgarden and sliding to the inside of the track going into Turn 4.
“I thought we were kind of running for second to be honest, and then that last stop, the aero crew just nailed it on the pit stop, gave us a really good change, and the car just came alive,” Hinchcliffe said. “I was able to put it wherever I needed to to get through traffic, and that’s the only reason I was able to catch Josef and ultimately get by him was just our ability through traffic.”
Hinchcliffe’s victory only came into question when a late caution flag waved — Ed Carpenter spun and made contact with Takuma Sato — and it looked for a moment like Newgarden was going to have a run at him with fresh tires. However, IndyCar was unable to clear the debris in time, and the race ended under caution, much to the dismay of Newgarden and Robert Wickens, who had each pitted for fresh tires.
Their decision to pit proved to be costly as the race never resumed and IndyCar deemed the race results final from lap 298, with Newgarden in fourth and Wickens in fifth. Meanwhile, Spencer Pigot and Sato each elected not to pit and were rewarded with their first podium finishes of the season.
After becoming Ed Carpenter Racing’s full-season driver this year, Pigot had yet to deliver a top-five result. Carpenter said he never lost faith in Pigot but was getting anxious to start seeing better results.
Pigot never let that pressure get to him, earning the first podium of his IndyCar career.
“I think that at certain times the past couple seasons we’ve had the pace to challenge for the podium, and one thing or another happened and it didn’t quite work out, so it’s nice to have it all go smoothly and we were able to really capitalize on everything that was going on,” Pigot said. “So it’s very satisfying, and yeah, a nice weight off the shoulders.”