Photo Credit: John Cote/IndyCar
A year ago during practice for the Indianapolis 500 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Schmidt Peterson Motorsports’ world was turned upside down when James Hinchcliffe, driver of their No.5 Arrow Honda, was involved in a huge crash. In the crash, Hinch was injured severely when a piece of the car broke and pierced his thigh causing him to loose a lot of blood. Hinch was extracted from the car careful and rushed to the hospital into emergency surgery.
Hinch survived but had a long road to recovery. Hinch never gave up on himself and SPM didn’t either. When the teams started their preseason testing Hinch was back into the car.
This past weekend Hinch proved that he wasn’t afraid of IMS even after his near fatal crash and went out on his qualifying run and put his car into the pole position. No one was more thrilled then one of his owners, Sam Schmidt. SPM’s other two drivers Mikhail Aleshin and Oriol Servia also had good qualification runs. Schmidt gives credit to the whole organization as all three of their drivers will start in the top ten, Hinchcliffe (first), Aleshin (seventh) and Servia.
“It was an incredible day,” Schmidt said. “I didn’t think anything would get better than five years ago. That was the previous hundredth, I think. I had three cars in the top ten then and then to come out here today — you know, James was 17th on the no-tow sheet on Friday. But Oriol was up there. Mikhail was up there. And true team effort between here and there, like he mentioned earlier.
“I almost didn’t drive that today because I was so amped up for the possibilities here tonight. But to be able to do the 105 average and hit 152 at the stripe was a personal goal for me ever since I was here last time in 2014, and that car, you know, drove flawlessly and it was because of a great team behind me. James, he’s kind of downplaying this thing. But I was there a year ago, and he was not nearly as pretty as he is right now, you know.
“I think the term is “yellow.” He’s come back. He committed to it and you just never know, right? You can ask and you can do all the work and you absolutely never know until you’ve got to mash the gas, and he did it today. He did what nobody else could do today. So I think that is a huge story. I would like to have the better one next weekend as well, but that would make a movie for sure.”
Schmidt gives Hinchcliffe all the credit for the success, saying that he and co-owner Ric Peterson are blessed to be apart of it.
“We have built an incredible organization of guys that some have been around a long time and some haven’t been around very long at all. They really pulled together this week,” he continued. “Honda definitely stepped up big time, because they will tell you I was yelling in their ears all last year and right up until about a week ago that they better pull a rabbit out of the hat here because this is the biggest race in the world. By God, they did. So, Art, I’m sorry. Allen, I’m sorry. Steve Ericson, I’m sorry. But thank you very much, yeah.”
Ric Peterson, who like Hinchcliffe is also from Canada, notes Hinch on the pole for the 100th Running of the Indy 500 is a huge deal for Canadian Motorsports.
“It’s pretty obvious when we go to Toronto all the time,” Peterson added. “James is a big thing in Canada. I bring James out to Calgary at least once a year. He’s the biggest thing we have in motorsports right now out of Canada. He’s the guy.”
Peterson says he is glad he hooked up with Sam Schmidt in 2013, saying he is a wonderful partner to work with and he is proud of all their hard work which has been shown in qualifications.
“We do have a great team,” Peterson stated. “We’ve got 50-some guys that don’t get any of the glory but they’re always working very, very hard. And today was just a great day. As soon as I knew we had three cars in the top ten, you know, pole was nice but we didn’t need it but I’m really proud of James and our team for putting that car there.”
