Jon Kuiperij Sports Editor sports@oakvillebeaver.com Sports 9 | Wednesday, July 23, 2014 | OAKVILLE BEAVER | www.insideHALTON.com "Connected to your Community" Stinging loss for Jr. B Buzz by Jon Kuiperij Beaver Sports Editor Oakville native James Hinchcliffe prepares for the first of two races Sunday at the Honda Indy Toronto. Hinchcliffe matched his best-ever Indy Toronto finish with an eighth-place showing in the first race, then placed 18th in a caution flag-filled second competition. | photo by Eric Riehl -- Oakville Beaver -- @Halton_Photog Hinchcliffe's tough luck at Indy Toronto continues by Herb Garbutt Oakville Beaver Staff In the four hours between James Hinchcliffe crossing the line in eighth place and then strapping himself back into the car for another IndyCar race, there wasn't much time to rest. The Oakville driver is usually a busy man at his home race, even more so this year being the only Canadian in the Honda Indy Toronto field. But the unusual circumstances, with Saturday's race being washed out leading to two races being run on Sunday, really put his time at a premium. Between helping devise a plan and giving feedback on car setup for the second race, to sponsor commitments, to an autograph session and getting something to eat, Hinchcliffe only managed to squeeze in a 20-minute nap. And he awoke in a panic. "It was a bit of a nightmare," he said. "I thought I had missed my alarm." The nightmare -- a recurring one -- wouldn't come until he was back in the car. Twelve laps into the second race, the rain began to fall. Hinchcliffe's crew had just radioed him to come in for rain tires when Juan Pablo Montoya slid into the wall at the end of the Lakeshore Boulevard straightaway. Hinchcliffe came into the corner after him and quickly discovered how Montoya ended up there. "As the rain started to fall, we saw a car in the wall, slowed up a ton to avoid anything but the concrete, once it gets a little water on it, it was like ice and I was backwards before I could correct," Hinchcliffe said. Mikael Aleshin also slid through the corner and his car wedged under Montoya's. While the safety crews worked to get Aleshin out from underneath Montoya's car, Hinchcliffe could only sit and wait to get restarted. By the time he got going and returned to the pits to assess the damage, he was four laps down. Hinchcliffe ran the remainder of the race with only Montoya on the same lap to race against and finished 18th. "It's such a shame," Hinchcliffe said. "The guys did such a good job on this car. We made a pretty significant change in between the two races and the thing was on rails." Hinchcliffe had to feel a little like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. Last year, the first year of the Toronto doubleheader, Hinchcliffe posted his best IndyCar finish in Toronto by placing eighth. Looking to build off that in the second race of the weekend, he didn't even get out of pit lane because his throttle stuck. By the time it was repaired, he was several laps down. This year, Sunday morning's race saw Hinchcliffe match his eighth-place finish in an uneventful race that saw most of the drivers making sure they still had a car to drive later in the day. Hinchcliffe did have to avoid a first-lap crash that saw Sebastien Bourdais get turned around, but he started eighth, never climbed higher than seventh and never fell below 10th. In the afternoon race, Hinchcliffe started 13th, but the changes his team made to the car were obviously working. By lap 7, he had already worked his way up to eighth. Then Montoya's accident touched off a caution flag-filled race. "It's such a bummer because we had such a really strong car and I think we could have been up there. When you see how all the carnage played out there, if we'd kept the nose clean, we would have been up there," Hinchcliffe said. Though he finished 18th, Hinchcliffe could have picked up a few more spots at the end when five cars came together in Turn 3. But, with the race being run on a time limit and less than five minutes remaining, race control chose to red-flag the race, stopping time and allowing most of the cars involved in the accident to remain see Driver on p.10 Friday night, the Oakville Buzz was in full control. Oakville needed just one more to win to advance to its first Ontario Lacrosse Association junior B conference final since 2006. Better yet, the team had three chances to earn that victory on its home floor, scheduled to host the remainder of the best-of-five series after winning Games 1 and 2 the previous weekend in Akwesasne. Less than 24 hours later, the Buzz was struggling to digest a 3-2 series loss to the rival Indians. Akwesasne delivered the final nail Sunday with a 9-6 victory over the Buzz at Toronto Rock Athletic Centre, earning a trip to the East final against the Halton Hills Bulldogs. "The feeling's empty," said Oakville head coach Mike Bentivegna. "You couldn't ask for a better weekend the weekend before, and we came up short. There are no words that can describe that. It's speechless and it's empty." Unfortunately, it's also familiar. The Buzz held a 2-0 lead in last year's conference semifinals as well, before the Clarington Green Gaels rallied for three straight wins. But, last year, the heavily-favoured Gaels hosted two of those final three games. This time, Oakville clearly had its lower-seeded opponent on the ropes. The Buzz just couldn't deliver that final knockout punch. Things began to unravel for the Buzz Friday, when the Indians used a 9-3 run over a two-period span to earn their first victory of the series, 13-9. The situation became much more dire Saturday. Oakville carried an 11-8 lead into the third period, but surrendered five unanswered goals in the final frame to fall 13-11. Akwesasne scored the go-ahead goal with 38 seconds remaining in regulation and added an empty netter with 10 seconds left. The Buzz also lost captain Colton Watkinson to an ankle injury suffered in the second period (Watkinson finished the game, but could not put weight on the foot following the contest.) Sunday's 2 p.m. start time left the Buzz approximately 15 hours to lick its wounds and rebound from the crushing defeat. Oakville managed to do so, tying the game 6-6 on Troy O'Donnell's goal with 8:19 to go in the third period, but Akwesasne regained the lead on a 2-on-0 breakaway 33 seconds later. The Buzz's spirit was completely broken with five minutes remaining, when the Indians struck for two goals in seven seconds. The arena might have been deathly silent for the duration of the game, were it not for a boisterous cheering section from Akwesasne. "All we had left in the tank was our momentum," said Indians coach Garrett Cree, who scrapped his team's pressure defence system for the final three games of the series, hoping to conserve his players' energy. see We on p.10