Photo Credit: Shawn Gritzmacher
James Hinchcliffe, driver of the No. 5 Arrow Honda, had the best race of his season thus far.
The weekend started off a little shaky for Hinch as he didn’t get any practice time in the first practice session held on May 12. He was able to get the car out during the second practice later on in the day on Thursday where he finished eighth. He then backed up his solid practice with the third quickest lap in qualifying for the Angie’s List Grand Prix of Indianapolis on the road course at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
When the green flag flew to start the GP of Indy, Hinch quickly jumped into second position stayed in the top-10 most of the race, only dropping out when they were cycling through green flag pit stops. After the last set of green flag pit stops, Hinch found himself in fifth place but he quickly charged his way to the front and ended the race in third place. This was his first podium of the 2016 season.
“It was great to be able to push and not have to save fuel.” Hinch said. “That yellow in the middle there kind of really helped everybody because the windows here were pretty small up to that point. We had a great car. Huge credit to everybody at Schmidt Peterson. The Arrow Electronics car was great all weekend. Missed the whole first practice. Managed to put it on the second row. Got caught up on some of the restarts there but the guys were awesome in the pits. We were way quicker than Helio but just didn’t have enough to get by him. Great result.”
Hinch was really happy with his result and credits his crew for the help.
“Definitely, I’m super proud of the #5 car, everybody on the Arrow Electronics team has done such a good job the last few races,” he said. “The momentum has really been rolling with us. We had a great race in Long Beach, great race in Barber, better race here. Missed all of first practice and still managed to get the car out there and qualify in the second row, race our way to a podium. Wasn’t easy. There was a lot of back and forth there. Some great racing, great work in the pits. Can’t thank the guys enough for the pit stop. That second stop was just killer. Unfortunately I couldn’t quite stay in front of Simon there.
“But had a great battle with Charlie a couple times there side-by-side for a few corners, and it was nice not having to save fuel. Just getting to go and drive a race hard and push this thing every lap and have some great battles along the way. Huge credit to Honda; obviously there’s a big upturn in form there, and really proud of the effort those guys have done. Big congrats to Simon. Three in a row is pretty impressive, and Helio coming from where he started, he was doing decent, came back at the end. We caught up to him but couldn’t quite get by him. As you said, catching him is one thing, passing him is another. But no, great effort from the guys all around.”
The first two days of practices for the weekend were both a little warmer then it was on race day, which presented a slight challenge for the teams.
“You practice out laps all weekend in conditions considerably warmer than this, and then you come in for that first stop, you fly out of the pits, and oh, all right, this is different,” Hinch said. ” I don’t know if it caught anybody yet, but it was tough, though, to get back up to speed. These Firestones work great, but they need a little bit of heat before they really kick in.”
