Ryan Hunter-Reay wins in Iowa again

Following last weekend’s ABC Supply Wisconsin 250, the Verizon IndyCar Series traveled to Newton, Iowa for the second consecutive short oval on the 2015 calendar at Iowa Speedway.

Allen Miller (Race Team Leader, Honda Performance Development) on tonight’s race: “Congratulations to Ryan Hunter-Reay on defending his Iowa Corn 300 win from previous year, and to Andretti Autosport for winning its sixth race in a row here at Iowa”. “The No. 28 DHL Honda was on rails at the end”. It was a lot of work in the cockpit.

The race to hit 12 is not yet over, and if we were to add another three names to the list of winners in 2015, it would have serious implications on the title race.

Josef Newgarden was second and rookie Sage Karam was a career-best third, putting Americans in the top three spots for the first time since the 2006 Indianapolis 500. In the beginning of the race the vehicle was really loose and I had a hard time with it. This is just awesome…. Montoya battled back to a top-five finish and extended his lead in the points race.

Dixon only gained six points on Montoya and also lost second place in the championship standings. But he finished 18th after a mechanical issue and fell to third, gaining just six points on his Colombian counterpart.

Last season produced a record 11 different race winners. “Certainly, I am not happy with the way this season’s gone at all”.

Hunter-Reay’s vehicle got stronger as the night got cooler, and pit stops went in his favor.

Hunter-Reay, who used fresh tires to get past half the field in the final 10 laps to win in 2014, clinched his 15th career victory and gave beleaguered Honda its fourth victory in 13 starts this season. This is a huge win for us. “That’s the difference”, Hunter-Reay said. “It’s a statement win”.

For Montoya, the run of good luck he experienced all season came to an abrupt end.

Team Penske: Qualifying well but not racing up to that happened again here.

One of the things that motivates Bourdais is a him-against-the-world attitude as he fights with the big budget teams like Penske, Ganassi and Andretti. “Whether it’s Toronto last year or Detroit or Milwaukee this year, every time you beat the big dogs, it’s an upset”.

Castroneves has never won this race and he has finished eighth in it the last two years.

“Something broke as soon as I loaded up”. “It sucks when it’s completely out of our hands, when something fails”.

In the latest stages of the race, Ryan Hunter-Reay remained in the lead, closely followed by Josef Newgarden.

Will Power once labelled Hunter-Reay as the most rounded driver in the IndyCar Series, and I definitely subscribe to that theory. “After a tough season, this one is really nice”. “I think we had a vehicle to win”, said the runner up. But when Dillon briefly took the lead, Hamlin put his No. 20 into the left side of Dillon’s auto on Lap 179 and knocked him out of the way. Ed Carpenter even confronted the rookie after a close encounter between the two, though the altercation didn’t become physical. But the second-generation star drove like a man possessed late in the race, took advantage of some timely caution periods, and roared back to fourth. He was right about Karam being a danger on ovals, but as Carpenter was vocally against drivers claiming the pack race at Fontana last month to be unsafe, he probably wasn’t the right person to say that Karam would hurt somebody racing as he was.