Hunter-Reay takes bizarre New Hampshire win

Ryan Hunter-Reay earned his first win of the season following a farcical close to a chaotic and frequently interrupted race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

The race swung on two of six restarts, with the first major incident coming when race leader Dario Franchitti – who had been utterly dominant in the opening third of the race – clashed with Takuma Sato, the Scot spearing into the pit wall and out of the race. Hunter Reay profited most by jumping into the lead, but the race swung again just eight laps from the end when stewards controversially decided to go green after a late shower had made a finish under the safety car seem likely.

The result was chaos as Danica Patrick spun from fifth, starting a melee which collected a gaggle of cars including title contender Will Power and ultimately led to a red flag, although with the surviving cars pulling into the pit lane it was not clear whether stewards intended to restart the race or call it to a premature halt.

After several minutes of delays and confusion, stewards ended the race and reset the results to before the final restart, handing Andretti Autosport's Hunter-Reay his first win of the season.

"I know Race Control wanted to get in a green-flag finish, but it was slick out there," said Hunter-Reay, who along with his team owner Michael Andretti had been arguing strenuously against the attempted restart. "I, too, wish it could have gone green to the end. It was a strange day. But sometimes racing is strange. We knew we had a good car this weekend, the guys have done a great job and it's a great result."

Hunter-Reay also expressed sympathy for Dario Franchitti. whose Target-Nikon Ganassi entry had dominated the race from the pole until being eliminated in a controversial collision on a restart with KV Racing's Takuma Sato. "I'm also sorry for Dario, but the team deserves this win," Hunter-Reay said. "I wish it was a little bit different but we'll take it."

Newman/Haas' Oriol Servia had jumped ahead of Hunter-Reay at the contentious wet restart but, to his chagrin, was reset to second following the official decision to discount that restart attempt, with Ganassi's Scott Dixon completing the podium trio in third.

Servia's teammate James Hinchcliffe completed a happy weekend for the team by finishing fourth ahead of Penske's Power, who was absolutely scathing of the officials (see separate story) following the decision to restart – particularly given the confusion immediately after, with Power at one point believing he would not be classified.

The Australian had been lapped by championship leader Franchitti after just 56 laps of the race, but with the Scotsman crashing out of the race it became imperative he scored as many points as possible. His official fifth place moves him back to within 35 points of the overall lead.

Andretti's Danica Patrick, whose spin caused the late fracas, ended up sixth ahead of KV Racing's Takuma Sato, who apologized for his role in the earlier collision with Franchitti.

"No excuses – my fault," Sato confessed. "I was too close to Dario – he was coming on but I should have given him more space."

Penske's Ryan Briscoe, Ganassi's Charlie Kimball and A.J. Foyt's Vitor Meira rounded out the top 10.

The tone of the race was set early on, as Andretti's Mike Conway got sideways and spun exiting Turn 2 on the very first lap, collecting Ganassi's Graham Rahal, who had been a contender for victory before a mistake in qualifying, and putting both out on the spot. After a short safety car, the race restarted only for another incident exiting Turn 2 – this time Penske's Helio Castroneves spinning and stalling, although he was able to get going again and eventually finished 17th.

Tony Kanaan and Tomas Scheckter – filling in for the injured Justin Wilson – also caused a caution flag interval when they clashed on lap 110, on the restart of which Sato and Franchitti came together.

For Franchitti, his first failure to finish a race since Kansas in 2009 throws the championship wide open again.

"I didn't put a wheel wrong in the race, and I don't believe I did at the restart," he said. "When you have a car that fast, it's devastating..."

Results - 215 laps:

Pos  Driver               Team                    Time/Gap
 1.  Ryan Hunter-Reay     Andretti           1h58m01.5843s
 2.  Oriol Servia         Newman/Haas            + 0.2361s
 3.  Scott Dixon          Ganassi                + 1.4839s
 4.  James Hinchcliffe    Newman/Haas            + 2.1750s
 5.  Will Power           Penske                 + 2.8250s
 6.  Danica Patrick       Andretti               + 3.6173s
 7.  Takuma Sato          KV                     + 4.1174s
 8.  Ryan Briscoe         Penske                   + 1 lap
 9.  Charlie Kimball      Ganassi                 + 2 laps
10.  Vitor Meira          Foyt                    + 3 laps
11.  Ed Carpenter         Sarah Fisher            + 3 laps
12.  EJ Viso              KV                      + 3 laps
13.  Alex Lloyd           Dale Coyne              + 4 laps
14.  Ana Beatriz          Dreyer & Reinbold       + 5 laps
15.  Sebastian Saavedra   Conquest                + 5 laps
16.  Simona de Silvestro  HVM                     + 6 laps
17.  Helio Castroneves    Penske                 + 13 laps

Retirements:

     James Jakes          Dale Coyne              176 laps
     Alex Tagliani        Sam Schmidt             137 laps
     Dario Franchitti     Ganassi                 118 laps
     JR Hildebrand        Panther                 118 laps
     Tony Kanaan          KV                      109 laps
     Tomas Scheckter      Dreyer & Reinbold       109 laps
     Marco Andretti       Andretti                109 laps
     Mike Conway          Andretti                  0 laps
     Graham Rahal         Ganassi                   0 laps