After winning the last three IZOD IndyCar Series races, Ryan Hunter-Reay was aiming for a fourth straight win, but the Edmonton Indy race was completed without a single caution flag, which made it difficult to move up through the field.
Ryan Hunter-Reay finished in seventh position this afternoon. Hunter-Reay had qualified on the pole, but took a 10-spot penalty for an engine change, so he was forced to start 11th. His win-streak is broken, but Hunter-Reay remains the points leader by 23 points over the race winner, Helio Castroneves, and 26 points over Will Power with four races remaining in the 2012 season.
“The guys had a solid day today, but we just needed a yellow – we needed something… anything,” said Hunter-Reay. “To take an engine penalty on a day like today – at a track with long straights – we expected yellows. Maybe lots of them, but we just didn’t get ’em. Its strange. with all of the marbles we have out there, you’d expect someone to go off or spin or something. I was praying for a caution and it didn’t come. Had we had a yellow, I think I could have gained spots on the restart…. But, we’ve had enough go our way this year that I’m not gonna whine about not getting a yellow…. We soldiered on to seventh. It was one of those days: we had a fast car and good pit stops but couldn’t make up the ground we needed to.”
Hunter-Reay also predicted a battle to the end for the 2012 championship.
“It’s going to be nail-biting until the end,” he said. “It’ll be a heckuva shootout at Fontana (the season-ending race), and I’ll bet it’ll come down to a fight between three cars.
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