Pippa Mann – Homested-Miami Test
A few weeks ago I was out here in America doing my first ever test in an Indy Lights car at Sebring in Florida, and my first test with my new team for 2009, Panther Racing. I flew back to Europe for my last World Series race with P1 Motorsport, and then came back to America where I will now be until Thanksgiving at the end of November. Last week, a couple of days after arriving back, I got on a plane and went back down to Florida for my next test with Panther Racing – this time however it would be a little different to anything I had ever done before. This time I was going to running for the first time ever on an oval.
While I was in Indianapolis last time I did the tourist thing and got the bus around the famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and although I was really excited by it I wasn’t so sure what all the fuss about the ovals would be. To me, it just looked like a really big flat out road course with four left turns, and a little bit of banking. I had a fair idea that getting the car flat would be pretty tough, but it just looked like another version of a “normal” race circuit.
When I arrived in Homestead and got out of the car, I stood and looked up at the banking I started swearing. No literally! Apparently while being very difficult in it’s own right, IMS is pretty individual in that it doesn’t have much banking. Apparently most of the other ovals out here look a lot more like Homestead. That means when you stand at the bottom the catch fencing is starting about thirty feet higher up than you on the outside of the track. No one else was at Homestead, so I was allowed out to do a few gentle laps in a hire car. This actually felt okay, and for the rest of that day and that evening, the one before the test, I actually stopped swearing and cursing and started to feel quite positive.
I must have made the track much flatter in my memory though, cecause as soon as we turned up the next morning I started with the cursing and name calling again. Not towards anyone in particular you understand, just in general about having to get out there and drive the damn thing! I went for a few laps in another hire car with ex-Indycar driver Pancho Carter who will also be my spotter this year, and now my swearing had an actual direction – him! Pancho then told me I would be going over twice as fast in my Indy Lights car. That of course made me feel much better…
The other important thing to note at this point is an oval car is set up to turn left, so on the straights you end up having to steer the car to the right. To a European racer, this feels like a car after you’ve had a big crash with someone and bent your steering – severely. All that and going at an average of 180mph…
My first ten-lap run can only be described as scary! Thankfully these feeling started to fade in the second run, and by lunchtime I had the whole “flat out” thing down. Roger Bailey (from the Indy Racing League) told me I had already passed my rookie test, and things were starting to look up.
Next thing, after getting “flat”, was to work on was my line, and getting myself and the car right down onto the white line on the inside of the track in the corners. On an oval, the white line is the shortest way around. It has less banking to help the car -making it harder to run and the car more unsettled – but as long as you’re still flat out it’s the faster way around. We worked a little on the car and then all of a sudden one of the changes hit the spot, and I was down there! We got the front of the car nailed right into the corner and the back just floating along gently behind. Everyone keeps telling me this is a car which will wreck me at some point next year, probably in quite a dramatic way, but it’s also a car which is seriously fast. Oddly enough it was also the car handling which I liked the best… But then drivers are fickle and it may have something to do with the lap times! On new tyres we actually ran faster than the pole time for either of the two previous years – not bad for a rookie on her first day!
So that was my first day running on an oval. I stuck to the plan (go fast, turn left, please don’t wreck!), and as per the plan I’m still in the group of drivers who have yet to hit the wall. However you may have noticed I said yet… However much I enjoyed my first oval test and however well it went, out here everyone knows we’ll all hit the wall at some point. Apparently how fast you truly are on an oval is how fast you can go after you’ve hit the wall for the first time. I’m sure it’ll come at some point – it does for everyone. But while I’m running this fast I’m just going to try and put that lesson off for as long as possible!
Yours Pippa