Mike Conway celebrates after winning the IndyCar race at Long Beach. (Photo: Lesley Ann Miller)
Ryan Hunter-Reay dominated most of the race but triggered a seven-car accident 24 laps from the finish when he tried to make an aggressive pass of Josef Newgarden. It left team owner Michael Andretti shaking his head in disgust because the accident wiped out both Hunter-Reay and Andretti Autosport driver James Hinchcliffe, and Sarah Fisher fumed on Twitter over Newgarden’s day being ruined.
The accident opened the door for Scott Dixon to win the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach for the first time. But he was short on fuel by roughly half a lap and stopped for gas with two laps to go. That gave Conway the lead, and the British driver cruised to his second career win on the temporary street course through the streets of Long Beach.
Conway, who also won at Long Beach in 2011, scored the win for Ed Carpenter Racing, a team that specializes in oval races. But Carpenter decided this year to get out of the car on road and street courses, and handed the wheel over to Conway, a driver who at the end of 2012 decided he no longer wanted to race on ovals.
“I can’t believe it. I can’t believe I’m actually here,” Conway said in Victory Lane. “I wasn’t sure Scott was going to pull in there. I couldn’t see he was saving fuel where he should have been saving. Second would have been good, but this is awesome.”
Newgarden had raced off of pit road in a successful bid to get back onto the track in front of Hunter-Reay and Hinchcliffe, the two Andretti drivers who had started on the front row.
But on cold tires, he wasn’t going to be able to hold off Hunter-Reay for long. Only Hunter-Reay decided not to wait and tried to pass Newgarden as they entered a tight Turn 4. The two cars collided, Newgarden was sent into the wall and Hunter-Reay bounced into Helio Castroneves’ path. Hinchcliffe ran into the back of Newgarden — Will Power and Conway successfully squeezed through the wreckage — but three more cars were collected as Takuma Sato, Tony Kanaan and Jack Hawksworth all ran into the crashed cars long after the accident began.
Newgarden was polite when he returned to his pit stand.
“I was on cold tires, it’s very hard to control the car, I knew Hunter-Reay was on hot, and at some point he was probably going to get me,” Newgarden said. “But I didn’t expect anyone to come up on the inside of four. There’s so little room there, you normally can’t make a pass, even if something like that is going on … the next thing I knew I was in the wall and I was just getting plowed into by everyone. “That shouldn’t happen up front. It really shouldn’t. You shouldn’t have incidents like that when you are running up front.”
Team owner Fisher was composed when asked about the incident on television, but let her true feelings be known on Twitter shortly after: “It was our race to win and we got robbed by immaturity. Period,” she posted. Andretti seemed shell-shocked at two of his cars being wrecked, “you need to be a little more patient,” he said, and Hinchcliffe didn’t mince words for his teammate.
“At the end of the day, patience is a virtue and someone wasn’t very virtuous day. It was a rookie move,” said Hinchcliffe, who suffered a sprained left thumb and will need to be re-examined before he’s cleared to drive again.
Hunter-Reay didn’t exactly accept responsibility.
“I went for it. I could have waited a little bit later, maybe that’s my fault,” he said. “It’s down to me to make the pass, I guess, I’m not sure. A lot of people say it’s my fault. I made the decision at that split second when he had some wheel spin to go for it, that’s the type of driver I am. I go for it. “You don’t know how down I am. Just very, very disappointed. I’ll look at it again, but a racing driver, when he’s in the moment and he sees a chance to go for it, I went for it because I want to win the race.”
Source: Speed.com
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