Andretti Autosport has continued a winning run going back to 2010 in the Verizon IndyCar Series with Ryan Hunter-Reay winning for the second time at the Iowa Corn Indy.
Hunter-Reay – who took his third win in four years to add to the domination – led home an All-American 1-2-3-4 with Josef Newgarden coming in half-a-second behind to make sure Hunter-Reay was kept on his toes.
Starting in ninth place, the DHL backed driver made steady progress up the field in the 300 mile epic until yet another restart (to be fair there were only six caution periods in 300 laps so it wasn’t too bad) when he made an epic restart to jump from fifth to second and push Newgarden for the lead.
When they made their next round of pitstops, the Andretti man managed to jump out ahead and made the most of the clear air to stay in front.
Behind that pair was Sage Karam, who took his best result in what is his rookie year with a magnificent podium finish – made even better for the 20-year-old when you consider he started in tenth place.
However, he made the most from the misfortune of others with Scott Dixon running a lot of laps down, and Tony Kanaan, Takuma Sato and Juan Pablo Montoya all retiring. Montoya retired after hitting the SAFER barriers at Turn Two on only lap 10, his retirement is his first since the Iowa Corn Indy last year.
Thankfully for him, his lead in the points table wasn’t too badly affected with Dixon suffering an upright failure after a race where it looked like he could have been in a position to cause trouble.
Although, one man moved himself up to dizzy heights after fighting for the entire race with first a tyre failure putting him two laps down, and then a gearbox issue that could have put him out. That man was Graham Rahal and he ended up finishing a mighty fourth after battling through the field (twice).
Behind them, and recording another decent finish after a couple of races in the doldrums, was Carlos Munoz who finished one place ahead of Ed Carpenter – the oval-only racer recording his best finish of the year in sixth.
The next race for the field is the first of a final trilogy of races for this season with the Honda Indy 200 at Mid Ohio.
