Soon, 2½-year-old Ryden Hunter-Reay will have the trophy he enjoys playing with for his bedroom. Dad, who earned the vintage gas pump trophy with thrilling victory July 18 in the Iowa Corn 300 at Iowa Speedway, promised.
“My little boy loves it because you can switch the light on top,” Hunter-Reay said after winning on the .894-mile oval for the third time in four years. “I’m going to put this one in his room. He’s old enough now to actually get what a win is. Every time I go to the airport he says, ‘Dada, win.’ This is pretty cool.”
Maybe his brother, 4-month-old Rocsen Indy, will receive one of the others as a night light for his room in the family’s Fort Lauderdale, Fla., home.
Hunter-Reay’s victory – by .5046 of a second over CFH Racing’s Josef Newgarden – was a reprisal of their 2014 duel to the finish, and possibly carried more weight. It certainly was more satisfying, Hunter-Reay noted.
“The win last year was pretty cool because (race strategist) Michael (Andretti) made a great call,” he said of the late stop for tires under caution. “I was pretty skeptical at the time. We blitzed the field at the end of the race. That was a lot of fun.
“But this is a big deal, to come in and to be on the slump we've been on, to come in from ninth, work at it, earn the race win, really earn it in the fashion that we did, it's a statement win. It's big for everybody involved in this team.”
Hunter-Reay was in the heart of the championship chase with six races left when he won in July 2014. The 2012 series champion finished sixth in the standings, and the lighted gas station pump trophy remained a beacon through a challenging 2015 season that had included three top 10s through 12 races.
“It’s still been a tough season. But that makes this win sweet. The last 20 laps felt like an hour and a half just knowing how important this was to me, to the team, to our partners, DHL, Auto Nation, Honda. This is a big win.”
Hunter-Reay inherited the lead on Lap 264 of 300 when Graham Rahal pitted under caution and staved off repeated challenges from Newgarden, who led a field-high 111 laps, after a Lap 278 restart.
“We went out and earned this one. We took it away from them. That's a big deal. As the sun went down, kept my foot in it, kept my head down, kept positive about it because it didn't feel very good at the start, but was hoping it would come to us and it did. That's how we won this race the past two times, is being really strong at the end of the race.
“Feels great to be back in Victory Lane. Certainly I'm not happy with the way the season's gone at all. More than anything at all I just feel relief, like a big exhale is how I can describe it.”