Arrow Schmidt Peterson Motorsports' James Hinchcliffe believed there was no hope in getting back on the track after a heavy crash during qualifying for the 103rd running of the Indianapolis 500.
On his first run during Saturday's qualifying session, Hinchcliffe lost the rear of the car and spun, slamming into the outside SAFER barrier with his car, causing major damage to the primary #5 car.
Once the former Indy 500 pole-sitter released by the infield medical centre team, he felt certain he was out of the day's running. However, the team immediately got to work on putting an engine in the already prepared back-up car and was able to get him out later that afternoon.
Unfortunately for the Canadian, the car was unable to qualify for the top 30 and automatically secure a place in the field. Hinchcliffe was able to get the job done on Sunday's bump day but had to go through the stress of potentially losing out on the race two years running.
"When I got out of the med centre, I told everybody there's no way we're getting back on track yesterday. It just shows what I know.
"Everybody on Arrow Schmidt Peterson rolled up their sleeves and went to work, and we had the backup car out on track two and a half hours later, which is just incredible.
"But being able to get out there with enough time left to do three runs gave us a lot of information, a lot of data that we could kind of look at overnight and spend long nights working on the car trying to make sure we had the speed today.
"And man, it's a nerve-racking feeling knowing that you only have one shot to get it done at this point, and with the weather moving in and being first, that was the same thing that happened to us last year, which was certainly not lost on anybody in the garage."
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