Hunter-Reay says Indy Cars not easy flat

Post-Michigan race comments: “I want to make one thing clear: these cars, at least ours today, are anything but easy to hold onto flat in traffic," Hunter-Reay continues. “In fact, they move around a lot. When the car breaks loose at 220 MPH with cars on both sides of you as you're running three wide, it's quite a feeling. Unfortunately, we had a problem with my visor tear-offs. I lost all of them within a few laps and my visor was completely sand blasted as if there was a layer of frost over my shield, and I could hardly see. The first two caution periods were not long enough to allow a helmet change but the third for Castroneves and Meira’s crash was and I can’t say enough about how the team dealt with it".

From there we were competitive for a bit, I made passes, moved up through the pack and by lap 90 or so, we were up into 9th place under green flag conditions. Unfortunately, at that point we started to experience electrical problems that forced us down into 5th gear, then into 4th gear. We were almost five miles per hour off the pace of the leaders. It's a shame because we were sitting second on the final restart and the Rahal Lettermen Racing engineers dialed in a good setup and balance on the car, even lowering the ride height on one stop, and I know we could have been up there fighting for a podium if we would have not had the electrical issues."

“I'm extremely relieved to hear that the drivers involved in the ‘Big One’ are all OK" said Hunter-Reay. “That wreck came as no surprise to me; it was only a matter of time. I was not impressed at all with some of the driving going on out there today. A few of those guys need to get their heads examined."

Hunter-Reay concluded, “We survived a survival race today. Finishing and building for the future is our main goal. We need to work hard to improve our pace for next weekend's race in Kentucky."