Canadian IndyCar driver James Hinchcliffe was stopped on the track 20 laps into the Big Machine Music City Grand Prix. By the end of Sunday’s race, he was standing on the podium.
Hinchcliffe crossed the line third in Nashville in what has been a challenging season for the 34-year-old Andretti Steinbrenner Autosport driver from Oakville, Ont.
Chip Ganassi Racing’s Marcus Ericsson and Scott Dixon were 1-2 followed by Hinchcliffe, who posted his first top-10 finish of the year and best result since Iowa in 2019.
“For us in the 29 car, it’s been a rough season,” Hinchcliffe told reporters during the post-race press conference. “We’ve had our own troubles, but we’ve also had a lot of bad luck. It looked like it was going that way again today when we got stuck in the traffic jam in turn 11. (Strategist) Brian Barnhart made a great call, got us in the pits there to kind of cycle through when it all shook out.”
“It was eventful,” he added. “We were at the back, front, kind of ran a little bit of everywhere today, in the middle. … We probably had a few too many yellows for what we would have wanted to put on a good show for everyone here.”
Hinchcliffe qualified 10th and held that position through the early portion when it looked like his race had been derailed. Will Power made contact with Penske teammate Simon Pagenaud and sent the Frenchman into the wall near turn 11 causing a bottleneck. Hinchcliffe was among the cars on the wrong side and came to a halt. Fortunately for Hinchcliffe, however, race control brought out the red flag to bring everyone into pit lane to avoid getting lapped and save his race.
“As much as we hate that happening, I thought they were going to drive the field through pit lane, until we cleared up the traffic jam, we were going to be three, four laps down and kind of out of it,” Hinchcliffe said. “Credit to IndyCar for not eliminating all eight of us, whatever it was, that were stuck back there. We had no damage. We avoided all the carnage. The traffic just blocked.”
Despite still falling to 23rd in the field, that didn’t faze Hinchcliffe mentally.
“I mean, for better or worse, it’s kind of become more commonplace for us the last few seasons,” Hinchcliffe said. “So we’ve had a little more practice doing it than certainly the first half of my career. Yeah, I mean, you’re strapped in the car the whole time. You try to never really get out of it. You don’t think about having to get back into the mindset because as long as you’re in the race car, you’re still in the race. You never really get out of it.”
A change in pit strategy with more incidents and yellow flags to follow allowed Hinchcliffe and his crew to capitalize, and lo and behold they were running near the front late in the race. Andretti teammate Colton Herta, who started on pole position, was hunting Ericsson for the lead with five laps remaining when his brakes locked up and sent him into the wall. That brought out the final red flag of the race with Hinchcliffe sitting third and a potential shootout to the finish line. Hinchcliffe fended off Andretti teammate Ryan Hunter-Reay for the final spot on the podium.
“I think the team is doing a great job,” Hinchcliffe said. “I think we’re really gelling at the moment. We’ve had a few good ones in a row. We got a couple tracks coming up that we really enjoy. Hopefully, this is some momentum that we can carry through the last five races of the year.”
Hinchcliffe will look to carry that pace into Indianapolis with the Big Machine Spiked Coolers Grand Prix this weekend at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course.
