Hinchcliffe salvages podium after early spin

It appeared James Hinchcliffe's race was all but over on the first lap Saturday after he spun on his own as the cars worked their way through Turn 2. But he made up ground using a three-stop strategy to wind up on the podium behind winner Graham Rahal and Scott Dixon.

Hinchcliffe said his last-to-third rebound was a matter of "thinking on your feet."

"There are kind of two main strategies coming into it," said Hinchcliffe, who started fifth. "One was going to be kind of reserved for the top half of the grid. The other for the back.

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"We started the race [on the top-half strategy] and by Turn 1, we switched to the other. Kind of inadvertently, but it worked out well. We got off the reds [during the resulting caution], had a really strong car on blacks. Caught a yellow flag at just the right time to close the field up and put us running with the guys that really we should have been running with all day.

"Huge credit to the boys. They were great in the pits. The car was awesome. We didn't have the best car yesterday. So to come back with a podium yesterday, pretty special, and Mikhail P6, so a good day overall.

Hinchcliffe's run through the field was reminiscent of Sebastien Bourdais' season-opening win at St. Petersburg, when he was forced to start last after a brake problem sent him into the tires in qualifying without completing a lap – a run Hinchcliffe thought about as he waited for the Holmatro Safety Team to get his car going again.

"I've been around this series long enough now to know an incident in Turn 1 doesn't necessarily have to ruin your day," he said. "We've seen it a lot of times. We saw Bourdais win from starting last.

"I kind of sat in my car and thought, Well, Sebastien did it in St. Pete, why can't we do the same thing? Knowing there was a strategy that kind of favored guys getting off reds who were at the back early. I immediately, as soon as we were back, knew we were going to be switching to that. We kind of had a backup plan in that sense.

"I was just lucky that the car was good enough and we were able to make some passes on track, make some spaces up in pit lane. T races are so long, they ebb and flow a lot. Just because you're last in one phase doesn't necessarily mean you're out of the game.