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IndyCar
GRAND-AM: My Time To Shine
The narrative Rolex 24 winner Joey Hand shared on his epic drive to overcome a stifling penalty and help his team to win deserves to be told without interruption.
Marshall Pruett  |  Posted February 07, 2011   Fremont, CA
Hand, center, worked miracles to put his team back in contention to win. (LAT)
One week removed from his win at the Rolex 24, the narrative Joey Hand shared with this writer on his epic drive to overcome a stifling penalty and place his Chip Ganassi Racing Riley-BMW in a position to win deserves to be told without interruption:

“I didn’t know I’d hit the tire until I left the pits. Honestly, I thought I hit one of my mechanics. I pulled out of the pit box and radioed to [Ganassi Rolex Series team manager] Tim Keene and asked him if I clipped someone. He said, ‘No, everything’s fine. They know to get out of the way before we send you. You’re fine. You did everything right.’ So I was relieved. Then he came over the radio and said ‘we’re about to go back to green, and I want you to pit.’ I’m thinking, ‘What?’ Are we that close where we can maybe pit and top off our fuel and make it to the end without another stop?

"I knew I didn’t speed when I left pit lane so it made no sense. Tim says ‘we’ve got to do a stop-and-30 [second penalty], we hit a tire leaving the box.’ Let’s just say nobody was happy. I asked him if it was my fault—something I could have avoided, and he said ‘no, it wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t see it. Just come in, serve the penalty, then get back out there and give me some great laps. We’re going to win this race. Period.’

“They said [Ganassi teammate Scott] Dixon wasn’t going to put a lot of pressure on me during the restart, so I went hard when we went back to green. I knew I had to build a gap right then because it would help on the backside after I served the penalty. So I gapped Dixon, pitted, did my time, looked up and saw my dad on the pit wall. He kind of gestured to me saying ‘It is what it is. Just accept it and don’t worry about it.’ Honestly, that made all the difference in the world.
Hand's father, left, who is rarely seen at the race track, gave his son the perfect gesture at just the right time. (Joey Hand)

“I thought to myself, ‘this is actually a good thing for me. This is my place. This is where I do my best, in a slight underdog situation with a great race car and with a great team. I need to look at this differently. I can’t go out there and mope around because of this penalty. That would mean I conceded the race. I’m going to make this my deal. This is my time to shine. I’m going to go out and prove to Tim Keene, to Chip Ganassi, to Mike Hull and to everybody that chose to have me here that they made the right decision. That made all the difference in my approach to my stint.

“You pound around for 20 hours or whatever—up to that point—and now it was time to throw caution to the wind. I call it ‘money-making time.’ I said, ‘let’s go make some money here, boys.’ I always save a little bit of time in big endurance races. During the weekend guys were talking about going flat through the kink [in the infield]. I wasn’t doing that and some of the guys were asking me why. I wasn’t ‘flatting the kink’ out of respect to the team. It can get you a tiny bit of time, but if you get it wrong just once, your race can be over in an instant. So I left that on the table on purpose.

“Pulling away from the pits, I said goodbye to that lift in the kink and everywhere else. We’d been plenty fast without it, but now I needed to find every little advantage because I had almost a minute to make up. I knew I had to take some chances. I used the curbs in the chicane for the first time. I knew I had to drive like there were no more yellows coming to wipe out the gap to the 02 car, and I also knew the 02 was on the same pit strategy as us. I came back out 52.5 seconds behind Dixon, and I knew that unless I pushed every corner on every lap until the end of my stint, we’d finish 52.5 seconds behind our teammates, and I sure as heck wasn’t going to let that happen.

“I said, ‘I can’t let it go down like this. I can’t look Scott Pruett in the eye knowing we just had the race in our hands and now it’s lost.’ I thought about it, and realized that this was my best chance to ever win this race. I knew that it might never happen again. There are guys who’ve tried to win the Rolex 24 for 10 years in great cars and it never happens for them, and I wasn’t going to let it slip away without a fight.

“So I put my head down and started ripping away at it. Tim kept encouraging me and encouraging me over the radio. He said ‘If you keep this pace up, we’re going to catch the 02 THIS STINT.’ It really fired me up. He kept saying the right things—kept stoking the flames, per se. I was pumped. I said, ‘Scott Dixon…here I come!’
If not for the penalty, Hand would have been robbed of the chance to show the full measure of talents. (LAT)

“Tim gave me great info on the radio. As I left the pits after serving the penalty, he told me the 02 was just exiting the Bus Stop. That was the first marker he used. At first, I thought we were in trouble. We were way behind. Then we started chipping away at it. Tim says, ‘you’re entering Turn 1, and they’re exiting Turn 6. A few laps later, it was ‘you’re exiting Turn 2 and they’re exiting Turn 6.’ Turn 6 became the reference point. By the end of my stint, the call was ‘you’re exiting Turn 5 and they’re exiting Turn 6. I had a big smile on my face.

“Dixon was fast all weekend. He’s a two-time IndyCar champion and a [Indy] 500 winner. Come on. He’s all-business. I knew the one place to get back big chunks of time was in traffic. I knew that instead of the old ‘it’s a 24-hour race, I’ll catch this GT car heading into the corner but I’ll wait until we exit the corner to pass because it’s safe’ routine was out the window. Nice and gentle…no risk…nope. My new approach was full-attack mode. Pass ‘em when you get to ‘em. That’s what my dad first taught me in karts. Pass ‘em whenever you can. If they go high, you go low. If they go left, you go right. I was just doing what I’d done since I was a kid and it worked.

“When Dixon would get slowed down by traffic, he’d do a [one-minute] 43 or 44. The worst I did was a 42, but most of my laps were 41s. Tim kept coming over the radio, saying ‘you just got four seconds on that lap…three seconds that lap…one second that lap…’ and I knew we were doing what we had to do. It was a great play-by-play to listen to. I knew it wasn’t going to be a piece of cake to run down a guy like Dixon, but I also knew if I used everything I’d learned in this sport, it was possible. I knew it was possible and it was. Belief was a big part of it.

“I knew I’d done enough to hand the car over to Scott [Pruett] and he’d be able to get the rest back. That was a great feeling. I knew if I got it close enough, he’d seal the deal. That’s all I wanted. You never want to let your teammates down. I didn’t want to make it hard on Scott; I wanted to get him ‘seal the deal’ close to the 02 because he’s an amazing finisher. I couldn’t feel my right foot by the end of the race because I was pushing so hard the entire time. I knew it was my big moment. Olympic skiers have one shot at glory, and I knew this was my one shot. I can’t tell you how glad I am it all worked out. I could have easily been the guy who lost the race for Chip Ganassi, but I ended being part of the team that won for him and BMW. That’s pretty cool, I must say.”
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Marshall Pruett

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