Not just happy being here - Ryan Hunter-Reay ready for more
Ryan Hunter-Reay doesn’t have time to waste.
No time for praise, no time for learning curves. Not for the 27-year-old driver in IndyCar racing who has been dreaming of this moment since terrorizing his Boca Raton neighborhood in the red go-kart that got him voted off the streets when he was 8.
The Indianapolis 500’s Rookie of the Year last month? Sorry, that was a sixth-place finish. He’s coming up on one year since he first stepped into an IndyCar, and he’s looking for that first career win. Some drivers take years to get it.
But Hunter-Reay doesn’t have time for that. He’s looking at No. 1. And he’s looking for it right now.
“We’re definitely opening people’s eyes,” Hunter-Reay said. “We’re showing people we’re a force to be reckoned with.”
Rush, rush, rush. Shift, race, go! Hunter-Reay spent three years locked into contracts with dead-end race teams, and his new ride, Rahal Letterman Racing, seems like the cool drink for which he’s been thirsting.
Bobby Rahal doesn’t have any time to waste, either. Not with the bad luck and tragedy that has befallen his team.
The team discovered and then lost Danica Patrick because of a personality conflict. It grieved promising young driver Paul Dana, who was killed in a wreck at Homestead-Miami Speedway in 2006.
There was a revolving door of drivers and a new chassis imposed on their race car in mid-season.
The former champion’s team is ready to win now, too. Right now.
Leave it to the fleet feet of good fortune that the two found each other when they did.
In July, Hunter-Reay was stopped, wasting time and energy.
For three years, he had been bound to a Champ Car team that wasn’t putting forward good cars and couldn’t maintain consistent engineers and mechanics. The car was in the garage when it should have been on the track.
So Hunter-Reay modeled himself after an actor looking for that big break. The Cardinal Gibbons graduate took every job to hone his skill.
He raced Grand-Am cars. He raced the 24 hours of Daytona. He tested cars for Chevy NASCAR, anything to keep himself inside a race car, any kind of race car.
That caught the attention of Rahal, who knew Hunter-Reay when the young driver was on his way up.
Rahal was the first American in 20 years to win a Champ Car World Series race, and he did it twice, once in 2003 and once in 2004.
He liked Hunter-Reay’s fiery attitude, too. And when Rahal released a driver in the middle of the 2007 season, he showed why he told Hunter-Reay to “keep your phone lines open.”
Rahal called Hunter-Reay on a Wednesday and told him to be ready to race his first IndyCar series race that Sunday at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course.
Hunter-Reay had 10 minutes on the track to test the black, green and blue Ethanol No. 17 car before he raced.
He finished seventh, behind only the big guns: Team Penske, Andretti Green and Target Chip Ganassi Racing.
“Good drivers respond and adapt to whatever they’re in,” Rahal said. “Great drivers respond more quickly.”
The driver and team knew they had found something special. It was a pairing headed the same direction in a hurry.
Hunter-Reay finished in the top seven in three of his six races last year to earn 2007 Rookie of the Year honors, and he has finished in the top 10 in six of his 13 races.
“He was thrown in the deep end and really handled himself well,” Rahal Letterman General Manager Scott Roembke said. “A driver can be a leader of a team. And the passion you sense from Ryan is a good thing.”
That still makes him a rookie on the courses he has never run, like he was at Indianapolis, but that R-word seems to grate on him. He has no time to be a rookie, for rookie mistakes or for finishes that are good for a rookie.
And he doesn’t have time for getting wrecked.
Hunter-Reay was running the best IndyCar race of his life two weeks ago at Texas Motor Speedway with five laps to go, running third and making a move on the eventual winner and standings leader Scott Dixon.
Then he got squeezed down at 220 mph by Marco Andretti, who had wrecked his car a week earlier, and they both crashed, costing Hunter-Reay his first real shot at victory.
Two days later, Hunter-Reay was still fuming.
“Marco’s been trying to crash his car all year, and he finally succeeded that Sunday night,” Hunter-Reay said.
Fortunately, he has no time for grudges either. There’s another race Sunday at the Iowa Speedway, another chance for his first win.
So if you’re running ahead of him, win it all or get out of the way. Ryan Hunter-Reay doesn’t have time for anything else.
“When I get in a car, I want to make a difference,” Hunter-Reay said. “We’re a tenacious group.” (palmbeachpost.com)
