“Hometown gamble” puts James Hinchcliffe on the podium with third-place finish at Honda Indy Toronto
- plugged2racing
- Jul 18, 2016
- 2 min read
It took a caution or two and the Schmidt Peterson racing team decided to go for broke with fuel management in the final 25 laps of the Honda Indy Toronto on Sunday. The result was a third-place finish for The Mayor of Hinchtown in his hometown race, the second podium of the 2016 season for the Arrow Electronics car.
A final yellow on lap 80 when Juan Pablo Montoya and Jack Hawksworth ended up in a tire wall proved to be beneficial, the Mayor said.
“I was hoping not to screw it up at the end and for once we caught a break in Toronto,” he added. “That last yellow really helped, but we might have made it without it too.”
Hinch ran a yo-yo race between cautions and pit stops, running between 3rd and 15th, with many laps in 8th place at mid-race on the streets of Toronto's Exhibition Place, an 11-turn, 1.786-mile temporary road course. Race distance was 85 laps for 151.81 miles
Mid-race was a real struggle, Hinch admitted. “Guys were throwing elbows at the beginning but we were able to maintain position. On the blacks, with the track temperature going up, we were really struggling.”
It appeared that pole sitter Scott Dixon would run away with the race but the pit stops and cautions that were beneficial for Power and Hinchcliffe at race’s end, worked against the New Zealander. The Mayor, who watched the race from the sidelines a year ago, turned in his best ever qualifying time on Saturday with a sixth; in both the 2013 and 2014 races he started eighth on the grid.
"We’re in as good of a position here this weekend as we’ve ever been here and it would be nice to get that first win of the season and to do it here would be second to only the (Indianapolis) 500," he said on Saturday. He wasn’t complaining about his third place on Sunday afternoon, however.
The Honda Indy Toronto was the 12th event on the 2016 Verizon IndyCar schedule. Full results for today's race are available on IndyCar.com.
Contact:
raluca@torchicom.com
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