AVONDALE, La. -- It's tempting to compare James Hinchcliffe's surprise victory in the inaugural Indy Grand Prix of Louisiana to some of Indy car racing's wet-weather disasters from the past.
Sure, only six of the final 26 laps featured green-flag racing, and Hinchcliffe won because he pitted only once, at the exact right time for the Schmidt-Peterson Racing car to be in front when the race was called after 47 laps on a time limit, instead of running the scheduled 75 laps.
A lucky win? Yes, and that's what makes the Verizon IndyCar Series so maddening at times. This kind of fluke happens more often than it should.
But to lump this in with farcical results such as Mario Dominguez's leading the field at Surfers Paradise in 2002 or Carlos Huertas' victory at Houston the past year would be a disservice to Hinchcliffe and his team -- not to mention the staff at NOLA Motorsports Park and Andretti Sports Marketing, who worked so hard to make the event a reality.
At least New Orleans offered some semblance of a race, with 15 laps of clean, competitive racing on a treacherous track before the red mist overcame much of the field and turned the last two-thirds of the contest into a display of "Follow the Pace Car."
"My biggest problem was carsickness," Hinchcliffe joked. "All those yellows, weaving back and forth, I thought I was going to throw up in my helmet.
"It's ironic that in the wet, we managed to be well-behaved, and in the dry, we all ran into each other. That doesn't make a lot of sense."
Hinchcliffe's win was sparked by the decision to pit him out of 10th place on Lap 13. Two laps later, the first yellow of the race flew, which set off a series of cautions that essentially ruined the rest of the afternoon. The field managed to string together two green-flag laps once, but otherwise, it was caution-restart-caution-restart-caution.
With qualifying rained out, St. Petersburg winner Juan Pablo Montoya started from pole position and led 31 of the first 32 laps. When he and the rest of the leaders stopped on Lap 33, Hinchcliffe was in front of Helio Castroneves and James Jakes, both of whom had been involved in earlier spins that put them on alternate pit strategies.
Montoya dropped to sixth after pitting and eventually finished fifth behind Simona De Silvestro. If anyone had reason to be aggrieved, it was the 1999 CART Indy car champion, but JPM was fairly sanguine about the way things unfolded.
Remaining the IndyCar Series championship leader probably eased his pain.
"It is what it is," he said. "I'm disappointed in a way, but we lucked in yesterday, with rainout of qualifying. We had really good pace in the race, so I can't complain. It's come a long way from where we were last year.
"To be honest, if that last caution hadn't happened, I think Hinch and lot of those guys would not have made it," he added. "A smaller team can do anything for a win, but we're going for a championship, so we have to be a little smarter."
By "that last caution," he meant the only serious incident of the race, caused when Simon Pagenaud got pushed off the track by Ryan Hunter-Reay. Pagenaud's Team Penske Chevrolet speared back across the track and took out Hunter-Reay's Andretti Autosport Honda and innocent bystander Sebastien Bourdais' Chevrolet.
Hunter-Reay believed the corner was his, but Pagenaud felt the American didn't leave him enough room.
"I was side-by-side with a nose ahead, but it seems like it's his track, so he runs me off, and look at what happened -- that was really dangerous," Pagenaud said. "To me, that's just not a professional move."
That Lap 44 incident ended the race under yellow, with Hinchcliffe thankful he was able to stretch his fuel to the checkered flag.
It was his fourth career Indy car win and first since he triumphed for Andretti Autosport at Iowa Speedway in July 2013. A lack of sponsorship with Andretti led to Hinch's move to join Schmidt-Peterson, where he was reunited with Sam Schmidt, the team owner who gave him his start in Indy Lights nearly a decade ago.
Sunday's win might not have been accomplished in a spectacular shootout, but it was a popular result anyway.
"That's the best thing about Indy car racing -- you never know what's going to happen in these races," Hinchcliffe said. "Luckily, we got in a position to run up front, and we were able to pull away from a Penske."
He said he was "50/50" about the early call to pit on Lap 13.
"At first, we did it for weather, but the weather held off, and it was actually the yellows that saved us," Hinchcliffe said. "A one-stop strategy ... who thought that would play out like it did today?
"To have come full circle and race with Sam is great," he added. "I never actually won a race in Lights with Sam -- they all came the following year. But I'd much rather do it at this level."
No less an authority than Rick Mears believes there is no shame in backing into a win. Three-time Indy car champion Mears took his first Indy car victory in 1978 at Milwaukee, and he remembers feeling disappointed that when Al Unser ran out of fuel with a few laps to go, it prevented him from truly fighting Unser for the win.
"Then a couple weeks later, A.J. Foyt told me to enjoy it because over the course of a career, you'll probably lose more races like that than you win," Mears recalled.
It was a tough Indy car baptism for New Orleans and NOLA Motorsports Park, with rain affecting each of the three days and turning the still unfinished facility into a muddy quagmire.
Under the circumstances, the race day crowd of around 10,000 was about as good as could be expected.
"Every first event has some issues," Castroneves said. "This was a great first test because the worst condition is the wet. To pass this test and move on is a great credit for all the people in New Orleans.
"Yes, we definitely want to come back, but hopefully on a drier day, so everybody can have a better time."