A racing vagabond finds a warm home on the IndyCar circuit

After working for many a team, Ryan Hunter-Reay may have found a home with Rahal Letterman after this year's Indy 500.

Ryan Hunter-Reay was discarded by Champ Car in 2005 and a year ago was still trying to find his way back to a full-time job driving race cars. Tuesday night he spoke at the Indianapolis 500 Victory Banquet as the race's Rookie of the Year.

"Everywhere the split took me and Champ Car and everything else, last year at this time I wasn't in a position to be winning races, to be competing for races," Hunter-Reay said. "Actually, I was just walking the pits at quite a few different races around the country and now I'm sitting here at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway talking about being Rookie of the Year. It's pretty cool, trust me. It's huge."

Bobby Rahal rescued Hunter-Reay last summer, hiring him for the final six races of the IRL IndyCar season with Rahal Letterman Racing. He was IndyCar's ROY, too, but had only Milka Duno to beat for the award.

Hunter-Reay, 27, was one of the great, young American open-wheel talents that fell victim to the split, the 12-season civil war between CART/Champ Car and the Indy Racing League that drained sponsorship dollars out of the sport and left few opportunities for new drivers.

Coming up through the ladder system, CART/Champ Car was Hunter-Reay's path. Multi-win seasons in Barber Dodge and Toyota Atlantic landed him in '03 with American Spirit Team Johansson, an operation funded by CART's $100 million war chest from its public offering to keep the car count up and contracts with promoters in place.

Hunter-Reay had the uncompetitive Reynard chassis, cheaper to buy than the Lolas, but through skillful driving on a wet-and-dry track and a good pit strategy, he won at Surfers Paradise. He was the first American rookie to win a major open-wheel race in 20 years.

The Johansson team folded as CART went bankrupt. Hunter-Reay, one of two Americans in the series, landed on his feet at Herdez Competition in '04. Armed with a Lola, Hunter-Reay led all 250 laps in winning on the famous Milwaukee Mile.

Hunter-Reay's two wins in two seasons would have established him in any other series, but it didn't save his job at Rocketsports in '05. He had a difficult season, with a pair of sixths his best finishes, and was bounced out for the final two races. Michael McDowell, now with Michael Waltrip Racing in NASCAR's Sprint Cup, replaced him. McDowell was also young and talented and he brought a sponsor check with him, something Hunter-Reay didn't have.

Under normal circumstances, some team in Champ Car should have snapped up Hunter-Reay for '06. It was illuminating about the awful state of sponsorship among Champ Car teams that nobody could afford to hire him.

Hunter-Reay became a racing vagabond. He drove in three races in the Rolex Sports Car Grand American Series in each of the next two seasons and drove for A1 Team USA in the A1GP round at New Zealand early in '07. Robby Gordon, brother of his girlfriend Beccy Gordon, gave him an opportunity to test his NASCAR Car of Tomorrow and talked about trying to put together some sort of NASCAR program for Hunter-Reay.

Rahal brought Hunter-Reay to IndyCar and back to open wheel, where he'd wanted to be all along, and rehired him for this season.

Hunter-Reay was one of 11 rookies to make the Indy 500 this year, the largest group since 1997. He had a slight advantage over most of the group in terms of oval experience, but wasn't considered a favorite in the wide-open ROY field. Rahal Letterman is a good, solid team, but it's playing catch up to the three IndyCar super teams, Ganassi, Penske and Andretti Green.