IndyCar: A season to forget for Hunter-Reay

What a difference a year can make in a driver's career. After 10 rounds in the 2014 Verizon IndyCar Series, Andretti Autosport's Ryan Hunter-Reay sat third in the championship standings, just 42 points out of the lead. After 10 rounds in this year's championship, RHR heads to Auto Club Speedway for this weekend's race a distant 14th in the standings and an insurmountable 180 points behind championship leader Juan Montoya.

The Honda-powered driver went into the 2012 race at the two-mile oval in Fontana with the title on the line and emerged with his first IndyCar championship, and then went on to win the Indy 500 in 2014 but, as he tells RACER, lows inevitably follow the highs in motor racing.

"It's certainly tough to deal with, but I've been through the ups and downs of racing so I understand that I need to keep a cool head about it, be professional and keep focused on the job, and that's really what I'm doing," said RHR.

"It's been one thing or the other the whole season. I think we had two separate situations going on. We had a situation on the ovals at Indy and Texas so far, where the car is doing completely different things than my teammates on the same setup."

The general lack of performance coming from RHR's No. 28 DHL Honda has been both surprising and consistent. The Andretti Autosport team leader and his championship-winning engineer Ray Gosselin (with RHR, TOP) have spent most of 2015 in a thoroughly perplexed mental state after struggling to capture the same pace as teammates Marco Andretti (seventh in points) and Carlos Munoz (12th, with one win).

With six races left to run starting at Saturday's 500-mile race at Auto Club Speedway, Andretti Autosport has thrown a Hail Mary to try and find the root of the No. 28's season-long problem.

"At Indy, we certainly had a situation where things weren't making sense at all," RHR explained. "The car was not responding to changes, it wasn't doing certain things. At Texas, we had the same thing, so now we're going to Fontana and switching everything over. We're switching over to a new tub, bodywork, front wing, rear wing, bell housing, gearbox, everything.

"We don't have enough time to single out and try to check things off a list of what's happening. It's already cost an Indy run and a Texas race so we are regrouping on the oval side."

And the No. 28's lack of pace has not been reserved for the ovals. Completing 10 races without a single RHR podium sighting has been an unfamiliar aspect during IndyCar's first season using aero kits, and through eight road and street course events, the 34-year-old's average finishing position is 12th with a best result of fifth at Barber Motorsports Park.

"On the road course side, man, we just haven't been able to get going," RHR continued. "We had a couple of races where we've struggled to understand what's going on and move the car forward. We've also been taken out, had some bad timing of things... If you look at the Duel in Detroit sessions, we lost a day pretty much. In Toronto, we lost the practice session. In qualifying and Toronto the red flag came out before my lap. In Detroit, the red flag came out before I finished my first time lap on [Firestone] Reds.

"And then in Toronto, we had a rear brake line failure that went as soon as lap eight, and it slowly but surely bled all the pressure out of the system to where I was hobbling around the last few laps. If it's not one thing, it's another. The whole season has been that way. Now I look back at St. Pete finishing seventh...not a bad finish for the Honda-Chevy fight."

Viewed through the (skewed) lens of IndyCar's manufacturer wars, RHR is ranked fifth among the Honda runners, but with Chevy dominating 2015 with its engine and aero kit package, being P5 on the losing team is hardly a consolation prize. As Honda's official (and only) aero kit testing team, Andretti Autosport was expected to have the edge within the Japanese brand's camp, but the opposite has been true.

Due to the nature of the testing, and the timing, RHR says conducting all of Honda's aero kit testing might have negatively impacted their team's race program in unforeseen ways.

"People misunderstand, too, what actually went into the aero kit testing," he noted. "They think we did all this development on the aero kit and we were the development team for it. Everything on this side of it with (Honda aero kit provider) Wirth Research was done so last minute. We were racing things that we actually never once tested as a complete package – the road course front wing, for example. And in testing, it was something different every time we went out. It's a much different car today than when we started the testing process."

"I think it's for a few reasons, but we did no development on mechanical grip in the off-season," RHR said. "We weren't able to test dampers on track. It just pretty much didn't happen. I think we fell behind there. I also think that our setups and the type of cars we have run in the past, the DW12 and even the IR03 car, they were much better suited to tuning the car with a certain style mechanically than what we were doing.

"With this car, it's been completely the opposite with the aero kit. We had to really start from scratch and find our way again, with no testing during the season, and an hour and a half of track time for the race or qualifying, we've been on the back foot the whole time. Bar some genius strategy pit stops that worked out, I do, we do, the whole team, everyone involved needs to do a better job."

RHR's frustration continues to fuel his desire to finish the season as the leading Honda team.

"We have no place to really gripe about anything until we are finishing every weekend as the best Honda program," he declared. "That's my position. That is why I've been pretty quiet about it. I need to get on my way and, first, we need to do a better job within our group, we need to be top the Honda knocking on the door of those top fives every weekend. And it's track to track dependent. If you look at Toronto, if you're a Honda, it's hard to even get in the top nine, but at other tracks, Hondas have been better. We're hoping this weekend in Fontana is a better one for us."

Honda has chosen to focus its resources on improving its package for 2016 instead of seeking short-term help from IndyCar for its teams in 2015. It leaves teams like Andretti Autosport with plenty of optimism – but little evidence – their fortunes will change by the time the championship concludes at Sonoma on Aug. 30.

"The package we have now is what we will have the rest of the season," RHR confirmed. "I'm lucky enough to have been in a position with a very good team for the past five years and we've won a lot of races. We won a championship and we won an Indy 500. Mentally, I understand and know that when the car is right and when we are doing things right I will be there too. I think if it was earlier in my career or whatever, this string of races, this lack of form would definitely – it would be hitting me pretty hard mentally.

"But I know when I have the confidence in myself that when the car is right and things are right and everything is firing that I'll be right there fighting for wins and fighting with the best of them. I have the confidence once we hit on the right boxes and checking them off that we'll be there. The goal is to continue to progress, find our form. And we are going about it methodically. We're not just swinging for the fences. We're focusing on the job at hand. We have the package we have now; we need to just make the most of it."

Despite the forgettable season so far, RHR credited his team and sponsors for weathering the ongoing storm.

"It's part of being part of the team and you win together, you lose together, and Andretti Autosport and all of the partners with the team have shown a lot of strength this year," he said. "Certainly, DHL and AutoNation have been more than supportive. The DHL program that we have is for the next three years. It's a long-term deal and they are the backbone of Andretti Autosport right now. They really are the IndyCar program, but they are here to win. They are winners and that is what they expect and that's what they want. That is what we need to give them.

"And on the AutoNation side of it, the activation's been awesome with the commercial for 10 million cars sold, and they're going to be giving away $10 million later this year at the last race at Sonoma. They're doing big things in IndyCar, and that's a positive thing."