When I left that day, I felt like I must have at least accomplished one of my main goals - which was to not look like that dumb American - but was also uncertain of exactly how things might transpire. Each day that passed I felt like my chances were slowly dwindling, but after a few nailbiting weeks, I finally got word that they had finished reviewing all the data and had picked two of us to stick in the car for the Jerez test… and one of them was me!

A bit of advice from Hildebrand's father at a young age has paid off after receiving an invite to test for fellow car show enthusiast Vijay Mallaya (L).

I arranged some flights, booked some hotels, and managed to drag my bags and gear onto a combination of the subway, trains, and eventually a very amusing cab ride to get to my hotel just a few minutes away from the race shop, which is located just outside the Silverstone Circuit here in Northampton. Over the last week I’ve gotten a thorough crash course in the technology and philosophy behind F1, as well as a bit of insight into the Force India F1 Team.

Having spent a year up close and personal with an Indycar team, where a huge part of testing and engineering goes into decreasing drag on ovals and searching for mechanical grip on road courses, it was an interesting juxtaposition to find that, given a much more open set of rules, almost everything about an F1 car is designed around the ultimate attainable downforce numbers. The characteristics of the tires, the geometry of the car, the rules that everything is designed around - they all make for a much more different formula for speed than I was originally expecting.

I read my fair share of racing and engineering magazines, but it was pretty impressive to really understand the magnitude of how intense the car and its abilities truly are - every little curve in the body, every angle, every dimension.

You hear about how many people are employed by F1 teams to design wind-tunnel models, do CFD work and develop the car, but until you see the army of engineers working hard every day it’s hard to really get a sense for how impressive it all really is.

With the test rapidly approaching, I’m getting more and more anxious to get in the seat and start to figure things out. Not having any real sense for what it will be like, it’s hard to know what specific challenges I will face. I’ve always trained hard but have added a lot of neck exercising to my regime lately as I imagine the braking and deceleration forces to be quite shocking.

I’m hoping to learn as much as I can as quickly as I can, while trying to make the most out of the whole situation, regardless of where things go down the road. I don’t expect it to be easy, but I’ve always loved a good challenge and am looking forward to taking this one on.

~J.R.

The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEEDtv.com, SPEED, FOX, or NewsCorp.

Sausalito, California’s J.R. Hildebrand has been marked as one of America’s brightest young open-wheel talents. Driving for AFS Racing/Andretti Green Racing in the Firestone Indy Light Series, Hildebrand earned the 2009 championship in style, claiming five poles and four wins from fifteen races.

Having worked his way up the ladder from Karting to Indy Lights, the 21-year-old has his sights set on a future in the IndyCar Series. With an equal commitment to his education, Hildebrand graduated high school with a 4.12 GPA and has been accepted on a two-year deferral to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Outside of the car, J.R. plays a wide variety of sports and concentrates heavily on fitness training.

Learn more about J.R. at JRHildebrandRacing.com.