Sports

Redwood Grad Hildebrand Stars In Texas

JR Hildebrand, starting 23rd Saturday, carves up the IndyCar field for his second fifth-place finish of the season.

IndyCar Series driver JR Hildebrand had to work his way through heavy traffic Saturday at Texas Motor Speedway to finish fifth in the Firestone 550k.

The Redwood High grad started 23rd after nearly crashing during Friday's warm-up lap in qualifying. He was a lap down on two occasions but still rallied for his second top five and third top 10 finish in seven starts this season.

Justin Wilson earned his first IndyCar victory since 2009.

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"Starting from 23rd, going a lap down twice, we’re definitely happy to come home with a top five in the National Guard Chevy,” Hildebrand reported on the Panther Racing website. “This is a place where Panther has been good, so there’s always a little bit of an expectation that when we come in here we can work our way up to the front. The last few stints the car was super loose, but we were able to keep the speed up enough that we didn’t lose a lot of time or positions. And when the car was good we could hammer on it and catch up.”

Hildebrand's team used an aggressive pit strategy to take advantage of the numerous caution flags Saturday and to climb as high as fourth place.

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“We would have liked the car to be a little bit better at the end of those runs, but shoot man, we’re happy to take a finish like this tonight,” Hildebrand concluded. “I definitely think all the drivers like being able to drive the car – I was going full swings back and forth during a run to make the car work better, and that’s fun for us when you’re the one that makes it work and you can see the results. It’s still an engineering project, but as a driver it’s super nice to have a lot more input into what’s going on.”

The finish was a lot sweeter than last year's race, when the Sausalito native severely injured his knee during an accident at Texas Motor Speedway.

The IZOD IndyCar Series will now travel to the Milwaukee Mile for Milwaukee IndyFest next Sunday.


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