By Dave Lewandowski
Published: Jul 31, 2013
LEXINGTON, Ohio — Three consecutive podium finishes by Ryan Hunter-Reay, including his second victory of the season, in June closed the gap on championship front-runner Helio Castroneves to nine points.
Three consecutive finishes out of the top 15 in July and the reigning IZOD IndyCar Series lost 60 points in the title chase entering Round 14 of 19 this weekend. Hunter-Reay, who’s third in the standings entering the Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio, is undaunted.
“We’re trying to defend the championship and that’s how it’s been all year,” said Hunter-Reay, who topped the time chart with a best lap of 1 minute, 05.6358 seconds on the 2.258-mile, 13-turn course in the No. 1 DHL car for Andretti Autosport in the Open Test on July 31.
“We’ve been right there second in the points pretty much the whole year, we have two race wins, but we’ve just had a string of bad races recently. Hopefully we’ll be getting over that soon, and there’s no better place to turn that around than Mid-Ohio.
“You hear past champions talk about that in a championship run year things tend to go your way and you get on a hot streak and things fall into place. I thought we were on that earlier in the year and we still can be on it. We’ve come back from bigger deficits than this so I’m optimistic. From Pocono to Toronto – eight days – we had a terrible run and we’re ready to turn that around.”
Hunter-Reay finished 24th at Mid-Ohio last August (mechanical) followed by an 18th place at Sonoma, but went on to win on the streets of Baltimore on Labor Day weekend and finish fourth at Auto Club Speedway in the season finale to secure the title by three points over Will Power of Team Penske.
He’s looking forward to the challenging road course, where he competed for the first time in 2003 in CART.
“Mid-Ohio has a flow to it that no other racetrack has,” Hunter-Reay said. “It’s a track that when you get it right it’s so rewarding because you’re hanging it out on the edge and you can feel the risk is there. It has elevation changes, braking zones, fast corners; it has everything you’d want in a racetrack.
“It’s going to be a tight competition here this weekend. IndyCar is always tight, but this is going to be a real shootout.”