“Hometown gamble” puts James Hinchcliffe on the podium with third-place finish at Honda Indy Toronto - Speedway Digest

It took a caution or two and the Schmidt Peterson racing team decided to go for broke with fuel management in the final 25 laps of the Honda Indy Toronto on Sunday. The result was a third-place finish for The Mayor of Hinchtown in his hometown race, the second podium of the 2016 season for the Arrow Electronics car.

A final yellow on lap 80 when Juan Pablo Montoya and Jack Hawksworth ended up in a tire wall proved to be beneficial, the Mayor said.

“I was hoping not to screw it up at the end and for once we caught a break in Toronto,” he added.. “That last yellow really helped, but we might have made it without it too.”

Hinch ran a yo-yo race between cautions and pit stops, running between 3^rd and 15^th, with many laps in 8^th place at mid-race on the streets of Toronto’s Exhibition Place, an 11-turn, 1.786-mile temporary road course. Race distance was 85 laps for 151.81 miles

Mid-race was a real struggle, Hinch admitted. “Guys were throwing elbows at the beginning but we were able to maintain position. On the blacks, with the track temperature going up, we were really struggling.”

It appeared that pole sitter Scott Dixon would run away with the race but the pit stops and cautions that were beneficial for Power and Hinchcliffe at race’s end, worked against the New Zealander.

The Mayor, who watched the race from the sidelines a year ago, turned in his best ever qualifying time on Saturday with a sixth; in both the 2013 and 2014 races he started eighth on the grid.

“We’re in as good of a position here this weekend as we’ve ever been here and it would be nice to get that first win of the season and to do it here would be second to only the (Indianapolis) 500,” he said on Saturday. He wasn’t complaining about his third place on Sunday afternoon, however.

The Honda Indy Toronto was the 12^th event on the 2016 Verizon IndyCar schedule. Full results for today’s race are available on IndyCar.com.

The next race on the Verizon IndyCar schedule will be the Honda Indy in Mid-Ohio on Sunday, July 31 at 2 p.m. ET. For more information on

James Hinchcliffe, please visit www.hinchtown.com, like him on Facebook and follow @Hinchtown on Twitter and Instagram. For on track activity, please follow @HinchOnTrack on Twitter.

Off-track action — This week’s Hinchtown HandMeDown scavenger hunt winner, was Kelly Dahl (@kdahl11) who managed to find the HinchtownHMD coin which was in the glove box of a new Honda Civic in the Honda World display. As done at every race, photo clues of the location are presented on James Hinchcliffe’s Instagram, Facebook and Twitter account on race day. Kelly took the special Coin to the Indycar Merchandise Tent where he was presented with a prize pack!

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Adam Sinclair

NHRA, IHRA, Motocross and other forms of motorsports Staff writer
About Me: Adam has been a race fan since the first time he went through the tunnel under the Daytona International Speedway almost 30 years ago. He has had the privilege of travelling to races all across the state of Florida (as well as one race in Ohio), watching nearly everything with a motor compete for fame and glory, as well as participating in various racing schools to get the feel of what racecar drivers go through every week. Adam has spent the last three years covering motorsports for Examiner.com., where he had the opportunity to see the racing world from behind the scenes as well as the grandstands. He invites everyone to follow him on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus, and looks forward to sharing his enthusiasm for all things racing with the readers of SpeedwayDigest.com.Be sure to tune in for his weekly sports talk program, Thursday Night Thunder, where he discusses the latest in motorsports news with drivers, crew members, and fans. The show takes place every Thursday at 8:00 pm EST on the Speedway Digest Radio Network.