Photo Credit: Gary Buchanan
Ryan Hunter-Reay, driver of the No. 28 DHL Honda, was the fastest Honda in practice three for the 100th Running of the Indianapolis 500 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway with the speed of 228 mph.
“Absolutely,” Hunter-Reay said. “Coming off the year we had here last year where I couldn’t get the car to do anything I needed it to, it’s nice to have the 28 DHL Honda up towards the front, especially here at Indy. This is what we wait for all year, to get back on track here, start working with the car, feel the energy of the biggest race in the world. We’re working through things, working through setup, some qualifying stuff, some race stuff, just getting in the mix, getting in traffic, and it’s been a pretty — it’s been a fun day, a challenging one at times. You know, when that wind switches around, it certainly throws you for a loop. Compared to yesterday it’s been a big change. But I was pretty happy with the car there at the end.”
With all track activity rained out on Tuesday May 17, there has only been two practices. In both of them a Honda car has been fastest. The top-10 has also been filled by quite a few Honda’s which is different then last year. However, on Friday all cars will get a boost so anything can happen.
“I fully expect things to come a little bit more into the norm by the time we get to Friday,” Hunter-Reay said. “You know, some of those Chevys out there look really good in traffic. We felt good, so we’ll see. It’s early days still. I know better than to start thinking that I have a shot yet.
“Too early to tell. I can’t even go there yet. It’s Wednesday. We’ve got a long way to go. I’m happy with where we are at the moment. You know, like I said, I’ve been here before and it’s been dragging around towards the bottom half of the field, and you can’t get out of there every day. That means you just don’t have a fast race car. The good thing is we have speed in the car, it’s good in traffic, and we’ll focus on making it better tomorrow and then move into Fast Friday.”
On Monday May 16, RHR’s teammate (Marco) Andretti was fastest and Hunter-Reay was second fastest with the rest of the Andretti Autosport teammates were all in the top-10. Then on May 18, RHR was fastest and teammate (Carlos) Munoz was second again with all the AA cars in the top-10.
“Yeah, this is a race that this team has been historically very strong at,” Hunter-Reay said. “Through the years it’s been one that one driver or the other, you’re going to have an Andretti Autosport car up towards the front somewhere. We’ve got some setups that we fall back on, some that we have in our back pocket if we need, so we have a lot of data. That’s the great thing about running a big team like that.”
This year for the 500 the cars have a few new features to them. The domed skids, the flaps and extra ride height.
“It’s tricky for sure,” Hunter-Reay said. You can see everybody is kind of — if you have the first car in line or the second car in line, right, maybe even the third car in line, life is okay for those guys. It’s not that hard. I mean, it’s the same old deal. You can poke your nose down and get some clean air. It’s the fourth-, fifth- and sixth-place cars, that’s where you really see who has a good race car, when you’re deep in the pack, if you can start making passes.
“That’s where it was tricky for us today. With as nice as it was today and the conditions as they were, which is not that much wind, I was surprised how challenging it was out there today, and that might be because of the added ride height. I’m not sure. I really don’t know. But one thing is it’s the same for everybody. We’ve got to work on it, and it was definitely tricky out there for a while today.
Another factor that will have to be looked into will be the weather. Right now it has been cool for May but next week that could change and it could be hot for race day.
“I think, yeah, today was tricky enough where you had to have some experience around this place,” Hunter-Reay said. “But if it’s 90 degrees on race day, it might make for a boring race. I’m not sure. It might spread it out a little bit, and I’m not sure yet. Just knowing how nice today is, our usual — in usual circumstances, this is beautiful conditions. Cool, you’re wearing a sweater. That says that a lot. You know what I mean? That means it’s a nice day at Indy. Once you got up into the hotter temps, 85, 90 degrees, this place becomes a different racetrack.”
