Ryan Hunter-Reay

Ryan Christopher Hunter-Reay was born on December 17, 1980, in the USA and began his motorsport career in karting, where he won six national titles in the World Karting Association. This success earned him a Skip Barber Karting Scholarship, with which he entered the Skip Barber Formula Dodge Series in 1999 and immediately won the championship. A subsequent shootout victory against other Formula Dodge drivers also secured him the Big Scholarship, worth $250,000, which allowed him to move to the Barber Dodge Pro Series in 2000, where he finished as Rookie of the Year.

Rather than taking the European route through Formula 3 and Formula 2, Hunter-Reay consistently worked his way up the North American junior ladder. Through the Toyota Atlantic Championship, where he won three races in 2002, he found his way to the Champ Car World Series, where he achieved his first career victory as a rookie in 2003 at Surfers Paradise, followed by a dominant start-to-finish victory over all 250 laps in 2004 in Milwaukee. The leap into the IndyCar environment followed, including a victory at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach in 2010, before he established himself permanently with Andretti Autosport starting in 2010.

Hunter-Reay celebrated the greatest successes of his career with Andretti Autosport: in 2012, he secured the IndyCar Series championship in a dramatic season finale at Auto Club Speedway, finishing ahead of Will Power, thanks in part to a winning streak in Milwaukee, Iowa, and Toronto. Two years later, in 2014, he won the 98th running of the Indianapolis 500 with a margin of just 0.0600 seconds over Hélio Castroneves, one of the closest finishes in racing history. In total, he has 18 IndyCar victories and 44 podium finishes, plus successes in sports car racing, such as the 12 Hours of Sebring in 2020 overall with Mazda Motorsports. For his achievements, he was awarded the ESPY Award as best driver in 2013 and 2014 consecutively.

In the 2026 season, Ryan Hunter-Reay is competing as a full-time driver for Arrow McLaren, the team where he also serves as Sporting Director and has completed partial outings in recent years. After years as an ambassador for Racing for Cancer, underscored by his number 28 in honor of approximately 28 million cancer patients worldwide, he now takes on a dual role between driving and team management. For the upcoming season, his goal remains to contribute to Arrow McLaren’s success both on track and behind the scenes with his experience as an IndyCar champion and Indianapolis 500 winner.