James Hinchcliffe was forced to watch the IndyCar Grand Prix of The Glen this weekend from the sidelines after his #5 ARROW Electronics Schmidt Peterson Motorsport car suffered gearbox issues.
Hinchcliffe started the race from sixteenth position and lost a position heading in to Turn 1, the whole field came in to the pics at the end of the first lap to change to slick tyres after the race was declared a wet race, leading to all cars having to start on rain tyres, despite the drying conditions.
The pitstop was slick and he rejoined in fourteenth position, unfortunately it was after this that the gearbox issues struck.
“About Lap 2 I started having problems getting into fourth gear;” said Hinchcliffe. “It would kind of rev off the limiter, it would skip the gear sometimes, it would clunk in.
“I knew we had a little bit of a problem, and then coming out of Turn 8, shifted to third and everything messed up in the gearbox and went down to first gear, and I think did some pretty big damage to the gearbox.
“It’s really too bad. We didn’t have the best qualifying and wasn’t the best weekend for us, but we were confident we could pull something off in the race — good strategy, smart decisions. Tough day for the Arrow Electronics guys but we’ll bounce back in Sonoma.”
