The Mayor Passes 13 Cars to Finish Ninth

Sitting in second at race start, and nursing injuries suffered in a spectacular crash at Texas, Josef Newgarden jumped pole sitter Simon Pageneaud from the get-go and ran away with the Iowa Corn 300 on the Iowa Speedway Sunday afternoon, in the fourth oval race of the Verizon IndyCar season to date. Equally as impressive Sunday afternoon was James Hinchcliffe’s performance, finishing ninth after starting at the back of the entire field in 22rd. The Mayor was ebullient in his post-race analysis.

“I think everyone on the No. 5 Arrow Schmidt Peterson Motorsports team needs to be pretty pleased with that result. To start shotgun on the field and end up with a top-10 without any lucky breaks is big credit to the team. The car had a lot of pace, the crew did fast stops and I stayed out of trouble. There were very few cautions, not a lot of guys going out and so we were able to just race our way through the field. The car has been good all weekend, other than that issue in qualifying, so it was disappointing to start back there but to work our way back up shows the strength that we had. Congratulations to Mikhail for the top-five, it has been a great weekend for the team.”

On Saturday, The Mayor drew an early qualifying position, which meant he had to contend with rubber on the track from the previous ARCA practice session. That, in part explained his four-lap qualifying average of 175.027, 10 mph behind the leaders.

"It was definitely a less-than-ideal day at the office in the Arrow Electronics car," he said then. "We had some sort of issue in qualifying and I'm not entirely sure what caused it but for the gap in pace that we saw, there was definitely a major issue.”

Without any real yellows during the race, The Mayor had a fast car and worked his way through the field, stayed out of trouble, and the team turned in some fast pit stops. Hinchcliffe was one of the fastest drivers on the Iowa Speedway, a 7/8-mile (0.894-mile) oval during the race distance of 300 laps or 268.2 miles.

The next race on the Verizon IndyCar schedule, the Honda Indy Toronto, will take place in Toronto on Sunday July 17th at 3:00 PM. The HIT street circuit is a stone throw from the mayor of Hinchtown's native Oakville. This year's event will be the 30th edition of Toronto Indy.

Contact:

raluca@torchicom.com

#verizonindycarseries