There’s a saying in sports that once you win one, the rest will come in bunches.
James Hinchcliffe is probably hoping that expression holds up for him as he looks to build off of a victory from two weeks ago at Long Beach heading into Sunday’s Honda Indy GP of Alabama at Barber Motorsports Park.
Watch the Honda Indy GP of Alabama Sunday at 3 p.m. ET on Sportsnet 360 and online at Sportsnet NOW.
The Long Beach win was Hinchcliffe’s first in the Verizon IndyCar Series since taking the checkered flags at New Orleans in 2015, just one month prior to his near-fatal accident during practice for the Indy 500.
Long Beach also marked the fifth career victory for Hinchcliffe, who made his series debut right at Barber Motorsports Park in 2011. Hinchcliffe’s best results at the 3.7-kilometre, 17-turn road course have been a pair of sixth-place finishes, which he managed in 2012 and matched last season.
And sixth is right where the 30-year-old from Oakville, Ont., finds himself for the start of the race following Saturday’s qualifying session.
He cruised through Round 1 of qualifying, but appeared to be on the bubble in Round 2 until laying down his fastest lap during his fifth trip around the track (out of six attempts) to squeeze into the Firestone Fast Six for the third time through three races. Scott Dixon is the only other driver to make it 3-for-3 into the Fast Six this season.
Hinchcliffe wasn’t able to gain any ground, however, as he only clocked one lap during the final round at one minute, 7.9710 seconds and was about 9/10th of a second off the pace of pole sitter Will Power.
Sixth is a promising starting position for the Canadian and having momentum on his side could be a powerful driving force.
“Obviously, it’s super competitive in the Verizon IndyCar Series at the moment,” Hinchcliffe said during the post-qualifying press conference. “Track position and good starting position is obviously a very important part of it. We focused a lot of our efforts and energy in the off-season to it. We were decent. We had a decent strike rate last season.
“Certainly, getting the No. 5 car consistently in the Fast Six is great and it’s put us in position to lead laps so far this season and obviously take a victory last week in Long Beach. Proud of the Arrow Electronics guys, and everybody at Schmidt Peterson Motorsports to consistently be giving us a car good enough to be competing with the best of the best.”
– Power earned his fourth Verizon P1 Award at Barber Motorsports Park and qualified on pole position for the 46th time in his career. That has the 36-year-old Australian ranked fifth all-time in the series in that category. Power has also found success at the course on race day with back-to-back wins in 2011 and 2012.
– It’ll be a 1-2-3 start for Team Penske with Helio Castroneves right alongside Power on the starting grid in second and defending race (and series) champion Simon Pagenaud behind them in third. Josef Newgarden fell short of making it a total Penske domination run and starts seventh after Hinchcliffe edged him out for a spot in the Firestone Fast Six qualifying round.
– All four Andretti Autosport cars did not finish the race in Long Beach, but now have fresh engines and look for a fresh start. Ryan Hunter-Reay, who was closing in on Hinchcliffe for the lead in LBC before his car gave out, was the fastest of the foursome and starts fifth at Alabama. Hunter-Reay is also a back-to-back champ at the course with wins in 2013 and 2014.
– So far this season it’s been the smaller teams taking the top spot on the podium with Dale Coyne Racing’s Sebastien Bourdais driving from last-to-first at St. Petersburg and Hinchcliffe (Schmidt Peterson Motorsports) at Long Beach. Bourdais, the series points leader, starts 12th, but as we saw from his outstanding performance in St. Pete’s, it’ll be interesting to see if he’s able to spin that sort of magic this time around.
– Graham Rahal has finished second in the past two Barber races, but it’ll be an uphill battle for him to reach the podium as he struggled during qualifying and will start at the back of the pack in 21st. Driving solo for the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing outfit is proving to be a huge disadvantage — compared to the four-car powerhouse Penske squad — without any teammates to feed information off of to know where they can make adjustments. Rahal took to Twitter to vent his frustrations.
– Zach Veach starts 19th in his first career IndyCar Series race. The 22-year-old young gun was set to make his major-league debut at the Indy 500 with A.J. Foyt Racing, but will fast-track his way into the series filling in for injured JR Hildebrand (broken hand) on Ed Carpenter Racing.