Hunter

First American to win since 2006 upstaged by son Ryden as he talks about his engine concerns after the red flag

Ryan Hunter-Reay was supposed to have been the focus of every photographer Monday during the traditional day-after shoot for the Indianapolis 500 winner, but his Mini-Me upstaged him.

Dressed in a bright yellow racing suit just like Dad's, 17-month-old Ryden Hunter-Reay hammed it up for photographers, posing and playing while his father reaped the rewards for winning Sunday's 98th Indy 500.

'He wakes up every morning and says, 'vroom, vroom, vroom,' ' said Hunter-Reay, 33, between Monday's photo shoot and the awards banquet later in the day. 'It's going to be a handful to deal with him, but he's so much fun. Every time I come back to the motorhome after practice, I get a big 'Dada.' It brightens up your day, no matter how it goes.'

Short on sleep and bleary-eyed, Hunter-Reay posed with team members and family with the Borg-Warner Trophy at the yard of bricks that serves as the finish line for the famous race. There, about 20 hours before, he'd reached the bricks 0.0600 seconds ahead of Helio Castroneves in the second-closest race in Indy 500 history.

Unfortunately for Hunter-Reay, he had to wear the same suit Monday that he'd worn the day before, when it was covered in milk during the traditional post-race drink.

INDY 500: Hunter-Reay first American to win since 2006

'It smells like milk and sweat,' Hunter-Reay said, 'which is an awesome combination if you've ever tested that out.'

VIDEO: Nate Ryan's three Indy 500 takeaways

This Indy 500 was made memorable by an unexpected but crowd-pleasing decision on the upper floors of Indianapolis Motor Speedway's pagoda. With eight laps remaining, the race was red-flagged, allowing time to clean the debris from Townsend Bell's crash and setting up six dramatic laps to the checkered flag.

The decision, made by IndyCar race director Beaux Barfield and his crew of stewards, was unprecedented at Indianapolis but not unprecedented in the Verizon IndyCar Series.

In 2012, Hunter-Reay went through a similarly hair-raising experience. Just as Hunter-Reay was about to close out his first series championship, a similar decision was made during the final 10 laps of the season finale in Fontana, Calif. A red flag flew after Tony Kanaan crashed. On the restart, Hunter-Reay had to stay in the top five to secure his title.

RYAN: Hunter-Reay win an American original

At Indy, Hunter-Reay, who was leading when the red flag was displayed, wasn't happy about the call at the time, mostly because he was concerned with how his Honda engine would respond to being shut down and then fired up again after 480 miles of hard racing.

'I was worried about it,' he said. 'Any time an engine runs almost 500 miles and you shut it off and have to start it again ... that can be detrimental to everything involved. It started right back up and had full power, if not more power than we had at any other time during the race.'

Barfield has said the red will not be used in response to crashes in the final few laps as to create a NASCAR-like two-lap race to the end. Last year, IndyCar received criticism -- mostly from fans accustomed to NASCAR's green-white-checkered finishes -- about Kanaan's win under caution. That yellow, however, came with three laps remaining. An ensuing red would have led to a green-white-checkered finish.

RED FLAG: Indy 500 decided under green

But Bell's crash Sunday occurred on Lap 191 of the 200-lap race. If situations arise in IndyCar races in which a red flag offers a live conclusion with more than just two laps left, race control can use discretion -- and the red flag. So, instead of watching cars idle around the track for nine laps to the race's inevitable conclusion, fans saw six green laps in which Hunter-Reay and Castroneves traded the lead four times.

The red flag also led to a scene most fans will remember as the race-clinching maneuver, a grass-cutting dive inside Castroneves in the entry to Turn 3 on Lap 196. It wasn't the winning move -- they exchanged the lead two more times -- but it will stand as the signature moment in an entertaining Indy 500.

'I thought that was the move to win,' Hunter-Reay said. 'I thought that was going to be it, for sure. It surprised him. It threw him off his rhythm a little bit, and that's what I was trying to do. I looked right and went left -- and there wasn't a whole lot of room -- and I made it stick. But you also need to be racing a great driver on the other side to be able to do something like that.'

Follow Olson on Twitter @jeffolson77 PHOTOS: 2014 Indianapolis 500

The end result was a race whose ABC broadcast achieved a 4.0 overnight rating (last year was 3.8) and -- most important to a proud Floridian -- an American winner at Indy for the first time in eight years.

'I'm a hard-charging American, and I've had to fight every step of my career for this ride,' Hunter-Reay said. 'I'm proud to be here. ... I'll be a great and honest champion. I'll fly the flag for our sport. You always get the real deal with me. I'm definitely not going to fake anything.'