James Hinchcliffe will do at least three races in the NTT IndyCar Series 2020 season.
The Canadian has made a deal with Andretti Autosport, where he will race car #29.
His first race will be the GMR Grand Prix at the Indianapolis road course early May, Indy 500 at the end of May, and the Texas 600 on early June.
Hinchcliffe lost an otherwise secure seat at Schmidt Peterson Motorsports (SPM), when McLaren got involved in the team, resulting in a change from Honda to Chevrolet engines. Hinch is synonymous with Honda, and has been that way for years, appearing in commercials for the brand in both USA and Canada. So it was quite worrying when the Chevy deal was announced, but he was being told by the team over and over, that the contract was still in place, until the end of October where Oliver Askew and Pato O’Ward were announced – and Hinch was sent out in the cold, with almost all full-season rides taken.
He previously raced for Andretti Autosport from 2012 to 2014, with Go Daddy colours on the car, until he signed with the SPM team for the 2015 season. He had a serious accident in the Indy 500 qualifying that year, leading into many months of recovery. The miracle happened in May 2016, where he qualified on Pole Position for the Indy 500, showing that he was definitely back to full strength.
Photo: Indycar.com / Stephen King
He will be the sixth car in an already heavily filled Andretti Autosport, who has Indy 500 winner Alexander Rossi as the main driver for the Championship, former Champion and Indy 500 winner Ryan Hunter-Reay, Marco Andretti, Zach Veach, and newly arrived Colton Herta, whom the team grabbed from the Harding Steinbrenner Racing, when they pretty much shut down in autumn 2019.
James Hinchcliffe secured a big sponsor deal in January with the software company Genesys. They will be the main sponsor on the car in these three races.
There is no doubt that a lot of work is going on behind the scenes, with him trying to find more sponsors, so the three races will hopefully turn into more – at least in Hinch’s home-town race on the streets of Toronto in Canada.
The NTT IndyCar Series 2020 starts on 15 March on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida.
