Reigning series champion Ryan Hunter-Reay recorded his career-best finish at Sonoma Raceway today with a sixth-place result (previous best was eighth in 2010).
Hunter-Reay and his DHL Chevy started from the fourth position and immediately began gaining ground, becoming the race leader within the first 20 laps of the 200-mile race. The No. 1 team now trails the championship leader by 62 points with four races remaining. “Seems like the way things have been falling lately,” RHR said, “we’ve just been making our lives more difficult than it needs to be. But, at this point in the season, we need to be making the kind of gambles we’ve been making, and we’ve just not had luck on our side. I think the DHL car was the one to finish first or second today, and we buried it deep in the field. It’s part of it; we have to take those gambles right now. We’re not interested in finishing second or third in the championship, and when that’s the case, you have to go for it all… that’s what we did. Disappointed – we had a great race car but couldn’t do much with it back there. We worked our way from last up to sixth but just ran out of laps.”