When a blanched James Hinchcliffe emerged from his race car at the end of bump day to sympathetic faces, hordes of media, and his team, there was still a faint ray of hope. As crummy as his car ran during Indy 500 qualifying and as painful as it was to miss the field, there was still another way. The way was controversial and would certainly draw the ire of many Indy fans but Hinchcliffe had to have been holding out hope that his team would buy a spot for him to race in during the Indy 500. It has been done before. Sometimes low dollar teams, one race a year wonders, will sell their spots to the highest bidder, especially if a big name does not qualify. There are few bigger names in Indy racing these days than James Hinchcliffe and as he announced yesterday, efforts to secure a spot have ended and he’ll be a spectator this weekend.
The outward and immediate implications are that Hinchcliffe fans will not have their favorite guy to root on. That’s a crummy thing. We bet he ends up in the tv booth doing color or something during the event. The larger implications for this failure to qualify are, we imagine, scarier. If the team has performance bonuses tied into their yearly earnings this would likely hamper those. Indy Car racing may be on an “upswing” but their events are still sparsely attended and they are regularly surpassed in the tv ratings by NASCAR and NHRA races when they are in competing time slots. ..except for Memorial Day Weekend. The Indy 500 is the beating heart that has sustained a flagging series for years. It is the race that delivers maximum impact to sponsors, potential sponsors, and anyone doing business with the series. We have to believe that Hinchcliffe’s sponsors are not very excited about this turn of events and who knows what implications it could have in the future.
By all accounts “Hinch” is an awesome guy, is one hell of an ambassador for the sport, and has become the frontman for this genre of racing. We wish him no ill, we hope for a good race, and with that being said, we are glad that he was not able to buy into a race. Qualifying is qualifying. Bump day is bump day. Make it or don’t. If he had bought into the race this year it would render all that tension and excitement moot.
Link: Motorsports.com story on Hinchcliffe missing 2018 Indy 500
No dispute, the “Mayor” is a good guy. His team on the other hand had to have a scape goat and fired their race engineer Leena Gade yesterday. You may not know it, but she was the lead engineer for (2) Audi victories at the 24 Hours of LeMans. I doubt at this point if Hinch will be very successful for the remainder of the season.
It’s a crime that this guy doesn’t have a full-time ride with a high-dollar team. He’s a proven winner and has a huge fanbase.
Really too bad for Hinch, the driver. But I am not fully understanding the controversy with this. Is the qualifying for Indy not a level playing field? Shouldn’t a full time Indy car team be better prepared than any teams that compete on a limited schedule and thus be able to qualify with no sweat? Isn’t Hinch one of the absolute best drivers around, again increasing the probability of the car qualifying? Yet they laid a big fat egg during qualifying and everyone is saying they should be given a slot in the race irrespective of their qualifying performance. Help me understand this.
Like Kyle Petty pointed out one time when things don’t go right, “That’s racing.” I don’t follow Indy Car anymore nor any of the other series as I used to but I understand the humiliation Hinchcliffe and his team are feeling. Time to put on their big boy pants and go to work on improving their team and it appears that’s what they’re going to do.