Indy 500: Will J.R. Hildebrand succeed in eighth shot at redemption?

Since J.R. Hildebrand crashed while leading the 2011 Indy 500 in the final turn on the final lap, he has had seven chances at redemption. Will he make his eighth shot count?

The ending of the 2011 Indianapolis 500 is one of the few things in IndyCar, motorsports and sports in general that if you saw it happen live, you will always remember it as though it happened yesterday.

With the 2019 Indy 500 scheduled to be contested in just over one week, we are now at the point in the year when arguably (if even arguably) the most memorable finish in Indy 500 history unfolded.

For J.R. Hildebrand, he has made seven attempts to redeem himself for what happen in the final turn of the final lap of his first career Indy 500 start just under eight years ago. Will he make his eighth shot count to make what happened in 2011 a distant memory?

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Through a good pit strategy and fuel-saving on the track, Hildebrand worked his way to the lead of the 200-lap race around the four-turn, 2.5-mile (4.023-kilometer) Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval in Speedway, Indiana with just three laps remaining after leading five laps earlier in the race.

While he still needed to save fuel, he was going faster than some of the others on the track, including Dario Franchitti, who he had just passed for second place before inheriting the lead when Bertrand Baguette made his final pit stop with three laps remaining.

Even in fuel conservation mode, Hildebrand did not face a huge risk of anybody catching and passing him to take the lead and the win. In fact, for those of us watching the live broadcast of the race, the position tracker at the top of the television screen was so messed up at the time that almost nobody even knew who was running in a distant second place.

The then 23-year-old Sausalito, California native took the white flag with the late Dan Wheldon several seconds and several hundred yards behind him. Hildebrand stayed clean through turns one, two and three, but he caught the 13th place car of Charlie Kimball in turn four.

That’s when it happened.

Hildebrand got up into the marbles and crashed into the turn four wall. Fortunately, he stayed pointed toward the finish line, and his #4 Panther Racing Honda was still moving right along at a pace that led many to believe he may be able to win the Indy 500 in a completely demolished car.

But Wheldon caught and passed him just a few hundred yards before the finish line and before the race-ending caution flag period began, and he ended up taking the checkered flag. Hildebrand still ended up finishing in second place, a finish that he has only matched once in his IndyCar career since then.

Here is a video of this unbelievable accident (start at 3:02:00).

Hildebrand followed up this devastating crash with a 14th place finish in the 2012 Indy 500 before crashing on just the fourth lap of the race in 2013. He then reeled of three consecutive top 10 finishes in the race, including a 10th place finish in 2014, an eighth place finish in 2015 and a sixth place finish in 2016.

He qualified in a career-high sixth place for the 2017 Indy 500, and he was in the lead pack for the entire race up until the end when he was issued a penalty for a restart violation. He had to settle for 16th. He qualified in a career-low 27th for the 2018 Indy 500, but he moved up a career-high 16 positions en route to a solid 11th place finish.

Hildebrand is set to make his ninth career Indy 500 start in the 103rd running of the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing” later this month, and he is set to drive the #48 Chevrolet for Dreyer & Reinbold Racing, the team for which he drove in the race last year.

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Will 2019 be the year during which J.R. Hildebrand finally gets redemption in the Indianapolis 500 after his devastating crash at the end of the 95th running of the race back in 2011? The race is scheduled to take place on Sunday, May 26, and it is set to be broadcast live on NBC from Indianapolis Motor Speedway beginning at 11:00 a.m. ET. The race itself is scheduled to begin at roughly 12:45 p.m. ET later that afternoon.