Hinchcliffe hopes to stay in IndyCar title hunt

By Feb 27, 2013, 4:00 PM EST
1 Comment

After fading from the IndyCar title picture over the second half of last season, James Hinchcliffe wants to be a threat to the very end in 2013.

Hinchcliffe was second in the championship at the halfway point of 2012, but three DNFs in the final seven races — including an engine failure in front of his Canadian countrymen at Toronto — played a role in his eventual finish of eighth in the standings.

But he isn’t ready to make bad luck an excuse for how his first year with Andretti Autosport ended, and he says he and his No. 27 GoDaddy.com Chevrolet team have found the areas they need to fix.

“Certainly, you look at the first half of [2012] compared to the second half, and the results flat out weren’t there,” Hinchcliffe said today in a media teleconference. “We’ve spent a lot of time — trust me — in the off-season looking at that, going over it event-by-event, and we’ve certainly found some weaknesses and places where we can improve.

“Luck is part of it, but I think you’ve got to work hard to get good luck, and that’s going to be our approach this year — to try and out-work everybody else and hope the rest falls into place.”

A familiar face will also provide Hinchcliffe with help this season. Craig Hampson, who engineered Hinchcliffe’s Rookie of the Year campaign in 2011 for Newman-Haas Racing, has joined the Andretti camp and will re-team with him as engineer on the No. 27 (Hinchcliffe’s previous engineer, Tino Belli, is now technical director at Panther + Dreyer and Reinbold Racing).

“Everything happens for a reason, and for me, that driver-engineer relationship is so, so critical,” said Hinchcliffe, who clearly holds Hampson in high regard. “For me to come with a different engineer from last year, but at least one that I’ve worked with in the past, is such a big step forward.

“Craig’s a tremendous engineer and he’ll be a huge asset to the whole team, but certainly, everyone on the 27 car is excited about the opportunity to work with him, and I’m over the moon about the opportunity to work with him again.”

Hinchcliffe’s always been an optimistic guy, and it looks like he has even more of it going into next month’s IndyCar opener in St. Petersburg, Florida (March 24, Noon ET on NBC Sports Network).

Alex Palou wins Detroit Grand Prix from pole

By Jun 4, 2023, 5:30 PM EDT
0 Comments

DETROIT – Alex Palou won the IndyCar Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix from the pole, fending off several challenges and three late restarts during a chaotic debut for a new downtown track.

After qualifying first, Palou won by 1.1843 seconds in his No. 10 Dallara-Honda over Will Power, followed by Felix Rosenqvist, Scott Dixon and Alexander Rossi.

Kyle Kirkwood (who rebounded from falling to 26th in a massive shunt on the first lap) finished sixth, followed by Scott McLaughlin, Marcus Armstrong, Marcus Ericsson and Indy 500 winner Josef Newgarden to round out the top 10.

As expected, there was lots of action on the nine-turn, 1.645-mile layout that made its debut Sunday with seven caution flags chewing up 32 of 100 laps – and eliminating some contenders.

With 20 laps remaining, Romain Grosjean slammed the wall in Turn 4 while running seventh in his No. 28 Dallara-Honda, which had started third. He later attributed the problem to a suspension failure.

Pato O’Ward’s shot at a decent finish fell apart during a green-flag pit stop on Lap 35. The No. 5 Dallara-Chevy’s left rear wheel was loose as O’Ward left the stall, so he stopped to allow the crew to push him back.

He returned in 26th at the end of the lead lap but then slammed the wall in Turn 9 eight laps later after overshooting the corner.

“Honestly our race went upside down on that pit stop,” O’Ward said. “All downhill from there. It is what it is.”

The yellow flew again during the next restart on Lap 49 as Sting Ray Robb went into the tire barrier in Turn 3 while Christian Lundgaard and Santino Ferrucci (who was trying to fight back onto the lead lap) also were caught scrambling in traffic.

During the caution, Graham Rahal hit the Turn 1 wall and then was rear-ended by rookie Benjamin Pedersen.

“I got a lot of understeer,” Rahal said, struggling to process what had happened to lose control of his No. 15 Dallara-Honda. “It’s on me. I need to see the tape and understand. I’m just disappointed in myself with all the errors this weekend, just not driving well. It’s hard to figure out why, but ultimately it’s on me. I’ve got to perform a heck of a lot better than that, especially on a day like this.

“It’s just not typical of me. I know you’ve got to stay on the dance floor. I don’t know what to say. We weren’t good in the race. We were in pretty bad shape. It’s disappointing. I’ve got to be better. It’s been a really tough couple of months. We need a reset. I need a reset. We need to come back much, much stronger.”

The first incident occurred in the first corner as Callum Ilott rear-ended Kyle Kirkwood on the entry into the Turn 3 hairpin (starts and restarts for the race occurred on the longest straightaway off Turn 2).

Kirkwood, who was starting after clipping the wall in qualifying, was able to continue after pitting to change the rear wing of his No. 27 Dallara-Honda.

But Ilott’s day was over after failing to complete a lap.

“I didn’t have anywhere to really go, but it was my bad for kind of being a little bit on the late side,” the Juncos Hollinger Racing driver told NBC Sports’ Kevin Lee. “I was gaining bit of time, and they just checked up a little bit more than I anticipated the last bit. I wasn’t coming with that much more speed, but I just couldn’t slow it down on the last part, so sorry to the team and sorry to Kyle cause that didn’t help him, either. On to the next one.”

After four consecutive weeks of racing at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and on the streets of Detroit, IndyCar will take a one-week break before returning June 18 at Road America.