“We are excited to get back to Texas to finish off the Firestone 600, and certainly we hope the Arrow Electronics vehicle ends up where we are now – in the lead!” remarked Hinchcliffe.
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Team Penske driver Power held off pole victor Mikhail Aleshin by 1.1459secs on the 2.5-mile “Tricky Triangle” to collect his fourth win of the season and 29th of his Indycar career and, while it tied him with a pair of Team Penske greats – Rick Mears and Helio Castroneves – for eleventh on the all-time victory list, it also reduced the gap to current team-mate and points leader Simon Pagenaud at the top of the table. Will was just faster in the end and I couldn’t do anything with him. Newgarden sustained a broken collarbone and small fracture in his hand, but won a month later at Iowa. I know a lot of guys that want to come run the Indy 500.
Married to Paula, they have three adult children and two cats.Paul loves the diversity of all types of racing, “a factor that got me hooked in the first place”.
At one point Hinchcliffe led by more than 10 seconds. Three races remain on the IndyCar schedule, with stops in Austin, Tex., and Watkins Glen, N.Y., before the season finale on September 18, the GoPro Grand Prix at Sonoma Raceway, which will offer double the normal number of race championship points.
Cars must be in the aerodynamic configuration they were in when the race was red-flagged.
Pagenaud, who will take the Texas restart from 15th place, vows to aggressively defend his points lead.
Newgarden and Daly will instead participate in an autograph session and join Texas president Eddie Gossage to take tickets at the turnstiles, one of several promotions created to get fans to attend (or re-attend) a race that wasn’t on anybody’s radar back in June.
After the ensuing caution, Hinchcliffe and Carpenter restarted 1-2 on lap 221, and Carpenter went low coming off the backstretch and led at the line by a matter of inches.
Hinchcliffe’s auto came edging back on the outside, the way so many Indy cars did in the Indy Racing League era of the track’s history.
TV: NBC Sports Network, Race- 9:00 p.m. ET.
“Pocono didn’t go very well, but that happens”, Pagenaud said. “I wish it hadn’t, but we have to move on and put it behind us”. We don’t lose sight of the big picture, but that’s not the strategy. “We got rained out until Sunday and [of] being in the cool conditions, we have nearly no experience”.
“P15 is not indicative of the vehicle we had or will have”, he added. For teams that do not still have six sticker sets left from June, new sets will be provided – no scuffed tires will be used. Last year: Scott Dixon won his second of three races, victories that helped him claim his four IndyCar championship. That’s not going to change. “We’ll focus on winning races”. “I don’t actually feel like I’m doing anything exceptional”, said Power, the 2014 IndyCar champion. “It’s always a lot of fun with the speeds we get there”. The Verizon Chevy was awesome in Pocono and (re) starting fourth in Texas puts us in a great position to continue our momentum. “Everything has been going great recently after starting off the season in such a bad place personally”. “The whole team is clicking on all cylinders now and you have to get all you can when it’s going that way”. Any driver who trails by 158-plus points after this race will be eliminated.
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Hinchcliffe’s toughest competition may come from the fellow Honda drivers who dominated at Pocono Raceway just last weekend. (2001 Race 2; 2002 Race 2); Kanaan (2004 Race 1), Dixon (2008 and 2015) and Dario Franchitti (2011 Race 1). He began covering races in 1965 for Racing Wheels newspaper in Vancouver, WA as a reporter/photographer and his first credentialed race was Jim Clark’s historic Indy win.Paul has also done reporting, columns and photography for Midwest Racing News since the mid-sixties, with the 1967 Hoosier 100 being his first big race to report for them.He is a retired middle-grade teacher, an avid collector of vintage racing memorabilia, and a tour guide at Miller Park. Kimball continued and finished 15th, but the contact ended the day for both Castroneves and Rossi.
