After a one-week break in the Verizon IndyCar Series schedule, Schmidt Peterson Motorsports and its drivers James Hinchcliffe and Mikhail Aleshin took to the legendary Road America in Elkhart Lake this weekend.

Fan favorite Hinch had a solid lead up to qualifying, sitting solidly in the Top-5 throughout. The No. 5 Arrow Electronics car struggled to convert in qualifying, missing out on the Fast 6 qualifier where the Canadian is so often found. He would qualify 9th with Aleshin in 19th.

In traditional Road America fashion, the 55-lap race provided lots of actions for the fifty-odd-thousand people in attendance. For Hinchcliffe, it was an up and down affair that saw him well inside the Top-10, but sustained damage to the left front of his car after contact with Will Power after his second pit stop of the day. He would end up 20th.

"Obviously not the day we were hoping for," commented a disappointed Hinchcliffe. "In the race we settled into a three-stop strategy, like so many others. After our second stop on the restart, Max [Chilton] and I were on [Firestone alternate] reds and Will [Power] was on [Firestone primary] blacks. Max went for a gap into Turn 3 and I went with him and got into the side of Will; it broke the front wing and I honestly thought it broke the front suspension. I crawled my way around into pit lane and we found some bent parts, managed to get going again, but at that point we were already a lap down. On a track like this it’s tough to make that back. We’ve had a couple of bad results the last few races - this is the only one that was on us, other than that it’s really just been bad luck. Hopefully we can get all this behind us and we can have a good result at Iowa in the Arrow car."

Aleshin had a less-dramatic run to a hard fought 10th place finish after one of the more trying weekends of the Russian’s career, the team making most of a four-stop strategy to move him towards the front with every stop.

"I think the team did a good job to bring the No. 7 car in the t op 10," noted Aleshin. "I had nice pit stops and the car balance was fine. Today’s result is not bad at all considering the problems we dealt with yesterday and with missing practice on Friday. The SPM team did a good job. It was a pretty intense race for me."

The Verizon IndyCar Series now takes a weekend off before it returns to action at Iowa Speedway for the Iowa Corn 300 on July 9th, the ultra-fast oval that saw James Hinchcliffe deliver a dominant win in 2013.