BALTIMORE – Michael Andretti watched the throng building around the 2.04-mile race course, periodically glanced at the sky for the threat of rain and finally witnessed one of his three Andretti Autosport drivers – Ryan Hunter-Reay – climb the top step of the podium.

It was a busy and emotional day for the former Indy car champion. Not only was he calling the race for Hunter-Reay from pit lane, Andretti Sports Marketing was the promoter for the second Grand Prix of Baltimore.

Maybe the company should take on that role for additional IZOD IndyCar Series events; they’re 2-for-2 with Hunter-Reay winning at Milwaukee and Baltimore. Combined with a sixth-place finish by Will Power of Team Penske, Hunter-Reay trails by only 17 points in the championship. The deciding race is Sept. 15 at Auto Club Speedway.

“It has been a crazy weekend and I want to thank everybody from Baltimore for coming out and supporting the event,” Andretti said. “I think it went off really well and I am proud of our whole team that we put together to run the race. There was not a glitch the whole weekend.

“The race was crazy, especially when the rain came out and we took a little bit of a gamble (by not switching to rain tires as did Power and several others. But we saw that the rain was going to stop.  So we thought if we could get through one restart and basically get to three or four corners -- because we thought there was going to be another yellow right away -- let's just go for it.

“We told Ryan (running seventh at the time), just keep it on the track, don't try to beat anybody but just keep it on the track. If we do that, it's going to go yellow again and then it's going to have time to dry out. That's actually what happened.

“So it's nice when the plan comes together.”

Andretti Sports Marketing took over promotion of the event in late winter.

“You can't even do a wedding in a hundred days,” Andretti said. “I haven't seen final numbers and all that, but my guys were saying it was pretty good.”