ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — James Hinchcliffe watched the 2011 season-opening race at St. Petersburg from the sidelines because he didn’t have a deal yet to drive in the IndyCar Series.
Out of work again at the end of the year when his race team closed its doors, the Canadian was pondering his future in the Indianapolis house he shared with a bunch of roommates when his big break finally came.
Michael Andretti was on the phone in need of a driver to fill Danica Patrick’s seat. The ride had gone to Dan Wheldon, who signed to drive the GoDaddy car for Andretti Autosport but was killed shortly after in the 2011 season finale at Las Vegas.
Hinchcliffe was both honoured and humbled — feelings that came flooding back Sunday when it all came full circle for him as he picked up his first career victory on the street course in Wheldon’s adopted hometown of St. Pete.
“This is his hometown; this is his car,” said Hinchcliffe, who will be added now to the Wheldon monument unveiled Thursday at Turn 10 on the course. “Knowing my face will be on that memorial, that’s really special.”
The Oakville, Ont., native drove the bright green No. 27 to the win in front of Wheldon’s wife, two sons, and sister, who have become like family to him and gave him the blessing to accept the job when Andretti called.
“It was a tremendous amount of responsibility I felt to honour Dan and do a good enough job to honour what he would have done in this car,” Hinchcliffe said.
“So to get the first win here in his hometown with his family here, who I’ve grown quite close to, it means so much more, to be honest. There’s nowhere that I would have rather had my first win I don’t think in this car than right here in St. Pete.”
Hinchcliffe passed Helio Castroneves on the final restart to take the lead and held on to win by 1.09 seconds over the race’s defending champion. He became the first Canadian to win since Paul Tracy’s 2007 victory at Cleveland in the CART Series, and Hinchcliffe waved the Canadian flag as he climbed from his car.
The win showed Andretti didn’t lose a step over the off-season, when the organization turned it up a notch even after Ryan Hunter-Reay’s championship.
It paid off Sunday when Hinchcliffe got the first IndyCar win for sponsor GoDaddy, who was with Patrick in the series before her 2012 move to NASCAR, and it was the 44th win for the organization.
The team also celebrated Marco Andretti’s third-place finish, and was satisfied with new addition E.J. Viso’s seventh-place finish considering he came back from a hard crash in Saturday’s practice after his suspension failed. Hunter-Reay might have also been in the mix if not for a mechanical problem.
“We worked so hard over the winter because we knew it was going to be that much harder to be competitive this year,” team owner Michael Andretti said. “To come out the way we did, I think all weekend all of our cars were showing they had strength.
“For Hinch, especially, he just was on it from the first practice on. He did not put a wheel wrong all weekend. He drove his butt off.”
So did Andretti’s son, Marco, who picked up his career-best finish on the downtown street course after using the off-season to study what he’s been doing wrong in the race car and to rebuild his confidence. He used a late surge to pass Simona de Silvestro with two laps to go to get the podium finish.
“I’ve been working so hard in the off-season, not just physically, but on places where I’ve been lacking and these places have been a weak point for me,” said Andretti, who praised de Silvestro but said in the closing laps, “I had to muscle her a little bit. I needed a podium.”
De Silvestro lost two more spots — to Tony Kanaan and Scott Dixon — before the checkered flag. She settled for sixth but was thrilled about her debut race for KV Racing Technology, which went fourth and sixth with Kanaan and de Silvestro.
Mario Andretti was among the many people who stopped after the race to congratulate the Swiss driver.
“We were running up front the whole day and it was really cool to be keeping up with them,” she said. “I think we can really learn from this and try to be better next week. We all know we can be fast and qualify fast and run up front. Now we just have to minimize mistakes so we can win races.”
It was a huge opening weekend for Chevrolet, which swept the top four spots in its first race since capturing the driver and manufacturer championship in last year’s return season to IndyCar.
Dixon was the highest-finishing Honda for team owner Chip Ganassi, who minced no words Saturday when he openly questioned Honda’s desire to win in IndyCar. The Honda teams had been slow all weekend, and Ganassi’s comments sent a clear message he’s not satisfied with engine performance.
Honda had only three drivers in the top 10.