Athletes - Ryan Hunter-Reay

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	Athletes - Ryan Hunter-Reay

Ryan Hunter-Reay is an American race car driver in the Champ Car World Series.

After winning six national karting championships, Hunter-Reay won a Skip Barber Karting Scholarship to race in Formula Dodge. Hunter-Reay then won the Skip Barber Formula Dodge National Championship in 1999 and then a shoot-out against the top Formula Dodge drivers for the Skip Barber Big Scholarship prize and it's $150,000 prize.

Racing in the Barber Dodge Pro Series from 2000 to 2001, Hunter-Reay won the Rookie of the Year award in 2000, and claimed two wins in 2001. He then proceeded up the Champ Car developmental "ladder" to the Toyota Atlantic Series in 2002, where he won three races, posted the most laps lead, most poles and fast times securing the World Com 'Rising Star' award and was noticed by several Champ Car teams.

In 2003 Hunter-Reay joined the Champ Car World Series, driving for first year low-budget American Spirit Team Johansson. Although handicapped with a slower Reynard chassis and three seperate engineers, he impressed many with a front row start and third place finish at Mid Ohio and a win at Surfers Paradise where he qualifed as the top Reynard and had worked his way up to 5th on a diabocial wet dry changing track when he opted for a high risk stratagey and pitted on the first lap of a mandatory three lap window to take on slick tires and managed what a lot of veterans could not and kept his car on the track and incident free. Through three restarts he beat first ex-Champion Jimmy Vasser and then F1 refugee Darren Manning for the win.

In 2004, Hunter-Reay moved to the Herdez Competition team, where he recorded the teams first ever pole and won in dominant fashion at Milwaukee, leading all 250 laps and setting a Champ Car series record for most laps lead in a single race and the youngest driver to ever win on an oval. He qualifed on the front row at Road America however a first lap back of the track incident where his ex-teammate Vasser forced him off before 'RHR' retuned the favor at the next corner moved both drivers to dead last. Hunter-Reay fought his way back to a 4th place finish however other than Toronto, where he was running 3rd on the last lap until Carpentier ran into the back of him and cut down a tire forcing him to pit, the remainder of the season was inconsistent.

In 2005, Hunter-Reay moved again to the uncompetitive 2nd seat at the Rocketsports Racing team. He struggled through most of the season without an engineer on what was obviously a shoe string effort and rarely ran near the front of the pack. His rookie team-mate Timo Glock was more successful, almost winning in Montrealwhen he caught a lucky yellow that elevated him from 12th to 1st, other than that both drivers best result was a 6th place finish. Rocketsports took on a pay driver for the last two races to try and pay the bills and released Hunter-reay from the team which was roundly criticized in the press and unpopular with the fans after having silently 'taken one for the team' and driving around in sub-standard equipment for the first 11 races.

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