The weekend ended up being a tough one for us. Through practice and qualifying we could pop into the top ten, but it was a struggle. All weekend I was suffering from a huge snap-oversteer issue at corner exit, and trust me, in the concrete canyons of Long Beach, that makes for a long weekend.

Hunter-Reay's activities with sponsor IZOD have kept the American busy prior to each round. (LAT)

The competition in IndyCar right now is the toughest I have ever seen. To give you an example, 1st through 20th position in the Sunday morning warm-up were covered by only one second. 20 cars in one second on a street course! What?

Like I said, it’s crazy.

Every tenth of a second is precious and we worked hard for it all weekend. We made some gains later in the weekend, but the flow of the race just didn’t go our way. In St. Pete the team made a brilliant call on our first stop, but in it just didn’t roll our way this time and we found ourselves in the back half of the field after the first round of stops.

We worked away at it and the Vision guys continued to execute fast stops.

Tire strategy worked against us as well. In St. Pete we nailed it, using the Firestone option-red tires at the very end of the race to move past Wheldon for 3rd, then Wilson for 2nd, and then we challenged Briscoe for the win. The key was that we didn’t over-heat the red tires due to all the re-starts.

At Long Beach we started on primary-blacks, 2nd stint on blacks then finished the race on reds in order to replicate St. Pete. Unfortunately the last stint in LB went green too long for us. Firestone develops and designs these option red tires to create great racing, and that they have!

The reds are designed to be very quick for a certain number of laps and then they drastically fall off.

We were really quick at the beginning of the last stint and I made an attempt to pass Matos, which he blocked, despite the rules being clear that blatant blocking is illegal.

28 laps into the tires and just two laps from the end we were P9 and my rear reds had given up. It was all-wheelspin all the time. 1st gear…2nd gear and even 3rd gear! The last two laps I did all I could do to keep the car off the wall and bring it back to the Vision boys in one piece. In the process we lost two spots to Doornbos and Tagliani.

RHR made the most of a sliding car last weekend, and persevered when things got tough. (LAT)

We were just happy to be rolling it on the truck after the last handful of laps.

And our weekend wasn’t over until Monday. A number of IndyCar series drivers visited Honda Performance Development HQ and Honda Corporate HQ just about an hour’s drive north of Long Beach. The tour of HPD was amazing and I quickly realized why Honda makes the most high performance and reliable engines on Earth.

It was a great opportunity to see the birthplace of our IndyCar engines and to show all the Honda employees our appreciation for all the hard work they put forth to give us such equality.

Well guys, it’s only 362 days until I get another shot at the streets of Long Beach…now it’s on to a completely track and a completely different mentality. This weekend’s race at the Kansas Super Speedway will be my first time back on an oval in nearly 7 months.

Time to start reviewing some in-car videos!

Talk to you next week,

Ryan

The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEEDtv.com, SPEED, FOX, or NewsCorp.

Ryan Hunter-Reay drives for the Vision Racing IndyCar Series team. One of America's brightest young stars, Hunter-Reay worked his way up the open-wheel ladder and joined the ChampCar series in 2003, winning at Surfers Paradise in his rookie year. He followed that up with another ChampCar win in 2004 before moving on to try his hand in Grand-Am, the Baja 1000, and driving the Team USA entry in the A1GP series.

A move to the IndyCar Series in 2007 with Rahal Letterman Racing sparked a resurgence for Hunter-Reay, and in 2008, the Florida resident captured a memorable win at Watkins Glen. With a strong new opportunity at Vision Racing in 2009, more success is expected from 'RHR'.

Learn more about Ryan at http://www.ryanracing.com, about his sponsor IZOD at http://www.izod.com, and share your thoughts with the team at http://twitter.com/VisionRacing.


The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEED.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or SPEED