Hunter-Reay tops warm-up despite spinning out
Sunday morning’s warm-up session at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course saw the unusual situation where two of the top three cars ended their half-hour final track availability in the tyre walls.
Andretti Autosport’s Ryan Hunter-Reay set the fastest time of the session with a lap of 1:06.5160s (122.208s) on the 13-turn, 2.258-mile permanent road course to put him 0.3313s ahead of Penske’s Helio Castroneves at the end of the half-hour warm-up.
Hunter-Reay – who was victorious in the last race at Iowa Speedway on July 18 – climbed out of the car without requiring assistance, and was not hurt in the incident.
The session was red-flagged to allow the car to be retrieved and taken back to the garage area, and the Andretti crew were hard at work starting repairs even as the warm-up session resumed for the remaining five minutes that were still left on the clock.
The session was soon back to red flag conditions when Jack Hawksworth also had an off in the #41 Aj Foyt Racing car. In his car, the incident took place at the exit of turn 12 otherwise known as the Carousel. He also made contact with the tyre barriers, but in the Briton’s case the contact was relatively light and didn’t do anything like the damage suffered by Hunter-Rear’s car.
The session ended under the red flag, and Hawksworth ended up credited with the third fastest time over all clocking in at 1:06.8559s (121.587mph), just 0.0086s behind second place man Castroneves.
The 90-lap, 203.22-mile Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio is set to take the green flag just after 2pm (7pm) this evening.
