with 188 laps led but was dramatically overtaken in the home stretch by Graham Rahal by 0.0080 of a second, the fifthclosest finish in Indy car history.
“ One lap longer, one lap shorter, we win that race,” he said.“ But that’ s racing. I’ ve been on the beneficial end of that before.”
To add insult to narrowly missing victory at Texas, Hinchcliffe’ s car was penalized in post-race inspection for excessive domed skid wear. He was docked 25 points, which wound up costing him five positions in the final standings.
He finished third at the Angie’ s List Grand Prix of Indianapolis as well as the Honda Indy Toronto, and was fifth in the Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio. But finishing outside of the top 10 in seven of 16 races shuffled him back in the points standings.
Setbacks aside, Hinchcliffe provided the feel-good story of the month of May when, one year after nearly losing his life in a practice crash, he won the Indy 500 pole. As much as“ Dancing with the Stars” heightened his popularity after the season ended, the headlines from winning his first pole had the same effect. He led 27 laps but finished seventh, a microcosm of his“ what might have been” season, although it was only one spot behind his previous best in five Indy 500 starts.
“ I think we take a lot of pride in this year, to come back from everything last year and be competitive out of the gate,” he said.“ We had a couple of rough events at the start of the season, one of them kind of our fault and one of them not. After that, it really picked up, the results started coming, Long Beach( eighth), Barber( sixth) and at the Indy Grand Prix