IndyCar: Ryan Hunter-Reay poised for a bounce-back year in 2020

Ryan Hunter-Reay is set to enter a contract year in the 2020 IndyCar season following a disappointing 2019 season, and he is poised to bounce back.

Entering the 2016 IndyCar season, Andretti Autosport’s Ryan Hunter-Reay had won at least one race in each of the last six seasons, his first six seasons driving for Andretti Autosport.

Even after the 2015 season proved to be a massive struggle for the Honda-powered teams early on, Andretti Autosport still managed to come away with a series-high three victories before the year ended, and Hunter-Reay accounted for two of them, winning the races at Iowa Speedway and Pocono Raceway.

But the 2016 season proved to be an even bigger struggle for the Honda-powered teams, and Andretti Autosport and Hunter-Reay struggled as a result. Hunter-Reay failed to win a race, and he finished in 12th place in the championship standings; he had never previously finished lower than seventh driving for Andretti Autosport.

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In 2017, Honda made improvements. But Hunter-Reay still struggled, again failing to win a race and settling for a ninth place finish in the championship standings.

Hunter-Reay bounced back in 2018, finishing in fourth place in the championship standings, the best finish of his career aside of his 2012 championship, and he won two races, including the season finale at Sonoma Raceway in dominant fashion. His six podium finishes tied a career-high, and he led 132 laps, his highest laps led total since 2014, while recording an average starting position of 6.3, his highest since 2013, and an average finishing position of 8.7, his highest since 2010.

But 2019 proved to be a struggle, and in more ways than one. He again failed to win a race, this time for the third time in four years, and his two podium finishes were his fewest in a season as an Andretti Autosport driver.

Perhaps most notably, he was outdriven by two of his teammates, if you count pseudo teammate Colton Herta of Harding Steinbrenner Racing as a part of the Andretti Autosport fold.

Hunter-Reay had finished as the third highest Andretti Autosport drive in the championship standings before in 2016 and 2017, but not in this fashion. Herta and Alexander Rossi both won two races and took multiple pole positions while Hunter-Reay did neither and was nowhere near the frontrunner he has become known for being. He and Herta ended up tied for seventh place in the championship standings.

But Herta won the tiebreaker, and he did it with two victories, this despite the fact that his season included the worst four-race stretch for anybody since 2011, just 10 finishes in 17 starts and just 1,651 laps completed, all marks that were by far the worst in the series among full-time drivers.

Now Hunter-Reay is set to enter arguably the biggest season of his career. In 2016, he and primary sponsor DHL signed a contract extension to remain with Andretti Autosport through the 2020 season, so this is set to be a contract year for the 2012 champion and 2014 Indianapolis 500 winner, who is slated to be 39 years old by the time the start of the season rolls around.

Not including the 2011 Indianapolis 500, when he failed to qualify and was subsequently named the replacement for Bruno Junqueira in a car owned by A. J. Foyt Enterprises, Hunter-Reay did not drive for a team other than Andretti Autosport in the 2010s decade, which included 169 races.

An IndyCar champion and an Indy 500 winner, Hunter-Reay is one of the best drivers of this era. But no matter how you look at it, 2020 is a big year for him.

Having just re-signed Rossi to a multi-year contract after there was speculation that he would leave for Team Penske after 2019, Andretti Autosport are clearly built around the 28-year-old Nevada City, California native. Add Herta into the mix in a fifth car, and it’s even more clear that the team’s future is no longer built around Hunter-Reay like it once was.

But can Hunter-Reay prove he still has what it takes to win races regularly and that a lot of his recent misfortune has been just that — misfortune — and not an overall decline in performance?

Will Ryan Hunter-Reay bounce back from a disappointing 2019 IndyCar season in 2020? The 2020 season is scheduled to get underway on Sunday, March 15 with the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida.