James Hinchcliffe stood on the podium at Belle Isle on Saturday despite the Canadian spinning on the exit of turn one on the opening lap and stalling his car.
Having started fifth on the grid, the Schmidt Peterson Motorsport driver ended up facing the wrong way after losing control of his car, but was fortunate that the incident brought out the caution flags, which allowed the Holmatro Safety Team to restart him before he went a lap down.
Once the pits opened at the end of lap two, he headed to the pits to switch from the red walled Firestone tyres to the black walled tyres, and then used his strategy and pace to the best of his advantage to climb from the very back of the field to finish an excellent third, although he admits that the mid-race caution period for Charlie Kimball‘s spin and Conor Daly‘s mechanical woes benefited him hugely.
“Tyres are the name of the game here,” admitted Hinchcliffe. “To be able to get off the reds after the spin in the first turn there played to our advantage.
“Then we got that yellow at the right time right after out stop. It put us up where we belonged, and I think we showed that the No. 5 Arrow car had a lot of pace.
“To come back from that – the SPM boys were great in the pits and really happy to grab a podium here today.”
