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IndyCar
INDYCAR: Born And Bred
Once a top open-wheel prospect, Joey Hand’s career-defining drive at the Rolex 24 is attracting interest outside of sports cars.
Joey Hand missed out on his shot at an Indy car career seven years ago, but after his stellar drive at the Rolex 24, people are beginning to wonder why. (LAT)
“If I knew I was going to get this kind of attention, I would have hit a tire a long time ago…” ~Joey Hand.
The path for every self-made man varies. For some, independence and self-reliance is discovered during adolescence. For others, like Joey Hand, star of the 2011 Rolex 24 At Daytona, it materializes later in life.
That point was driven home at Daytona, where he shared one of the two Chip Ganassi Racing Daytona Prototypes in a team filled with daunting talent. Teammates like Dario Franchitti, Juan Pablo Montoya and Scott Dixon—men with four combined Indy 500 wins, four Rolex 24 victories and six Indy car titles—could have rattled Hand and thrown him off his game.
But for Hand, one of the scrappiest drivers in North America, racing alongside such famous drivers was taken as a private challenge. Their fame and provenance aside, Hand knew he had one shot to test his skills against them in equal equipment.
If he fared well, perception of his abilities and his place in the sport could be changed forever. If he struggled, he’d be pigeon-holed as little more than a sports car driver who failed to measure up to the greats.
Hand is a familiar name in sports car circles. As one of America’s finest road racers, his role as a leader within the the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing factory BMW ALMS GT team has netted the Sacramento, California native plenty of respect in the closed-wheel community.
But with the chain of events that happened after hitting a tire on pit lane during last month’s Rolex 24, Hand is gaining a new level of notoriety. Clipping a tire while leading with just a few hours to go, serving a stop-n-hold-for-30 (seconds) penalty, and driving back from almost one-minute behind the all-star sister 02 Franchitti/Montoya/Dixon/McMurray car to put his 01 Ganassi entry in a position to win turned Hand into an overnight sensation.
Now, and for the first time in many years, some are beginning to wonder what Hand could do outside of tin-tops and prototypes.
After matching or beating some of the best IndyCar and NASCAR drivers on the planet in identically prepared Riley-BMWs, could the 31-year-old be in a position to add some extracurricular activities to his full-time job with BMW?
Understanding why Hand isn’t currently competing alongside Dario Franchitti or Helio Castroneves in the IZOD IndyCar Series reveals a fascinating aspect of Hand’s drive and determination.
A rising star in the open-wheel ranks during the late 1990s, Hand moved up the ladder to the Toyota Atlantic series with Dede Rogers’ respected DSTP team. DSTP earned the 2000 Atlantic championship with future Indy 500 winner Buddy Rice, and Hand, Rice’s successor in 2001, finished third in the standings as a rookie.
His career hadn’t been easy up to that point, but with Rogers’ help, Hand appeared to be on his way to open-wheel stardom. All of that changed at the mid-way point of his sophomore Atlantic season.
A testing crash at Milwaukee (in the pre-SAFER Barrier era) ended Hand’s season on the spot, as he suffered three broken vertebra, a broken tailbone, a broken knee and broken ribs. At the time of the crash, doctors hailed his use of a HANS Device as a life-saving decision. A long recovery awaited Hand, but that didn’t diminish his enthusiasm.
The 2002 Atlantic championship—the season most people penciled in as one Hand would dominate—was a total write-off. A dream deferred…
With Atlantic costs spiraling out of control and Hand’s season over, Rogers planned to shut down DSTP and liquidate the team. But after witnessing Hand’s resolve to get back behind the wheel, she kept the doors open for one more year. It would be Hand’s final shot at a championship to help launch him to the top.
Fully healed for 2003 but without the massive budget needed to combat the dominant teams, Hand’s season offered little in the way of meaningful results. His dreams of earning a Champ Car or IRL ride never materialized and his name was no longer being mentioned amongst the sport’s next great prospects.
A shooting star in 2001, sidelined in 2002 and all but forgotten in 2003, Hand’s career arc was completely backwards. He was in and out of the open-wheel meat grinder in just three years.
While Rogers’ moral support never waned, Hand’s brief spell in a nurturing, fully-funded environment was replaced by uncertainty and unemployment. As he’d seen happen to many of his friends, once the ladder was removed, most open-wheel drivers tended to fade away, but newly married and with a karting business to support, giving up on becoming a professional race car driver simply wasn't an option.
With his first shot at a career in open-wheel resulting in a misfire, Hand joined the long line of young professionals looking for a paying drive in sports cars. Having to reinvent one’s self at the age of 24 isn’t easy, and as Hand found, the smartest move he could make would be to put the easy days at DSTP behind him.
Expecting his phone to ring with offers of cash and stardom was just the kind of attitude he’d seen other young drivers succumb to, and survival—at least amongst the hundred or more professional drivers looking for the same paid drives he sought—would require a more earnest approach.
Thanks to an opportunity that came earlier in his career—a test drive with the factory PTG BMW GT team he earned as a prize for winning the 1999 Formula Mazda championship—Hand had a number to call when the chapter ended on his open-wheel endeavors.
After impressing PTG boss Tom Milner during his one-day test, a call to inquire about a drive call just prior to the 2004 season was the catalyst for the career Hand has today with the German manufacturer.
Fast-forward to 2011, and after seven years as a factory BMW driver, Hand’s transformational drive at the Rolex 24 has earned the ever-confident driver some richly deserved interest from outside sports car racing circles.
With driving duties for BMW as his anchor, three of the men who’ve been instrumental in Hand’s recent rise to fame—Bobby Rahal, Chip Ganassi and Ganassi’s managing director, Mike Hull—would love to see how Hand performs in a variety of racing cars.
“I love all of this attention for Joey,” said Rahal, Hand’s ALMS team owner. “I think all of the attention he’s getting outside of sports cars is just great. I’d love to run him in an Indy car because I think he’d be really good at it. It really depends on what he wants. In the past I’ve offered IndyCar rides to Jon Fogarty and Alex Gurney, and they turned it down because they weren’t comfortable for whatever reasons, but I’d love to run Joey. I think he’s a good enough driver and also a genuinely good guy.”
Hull, who isn’t known for waxing poetic about his drivers unless it’s absolutely warranted, says having ‘name’ drivers for Hand to benchmark his talent against was a major benefit of being on Ganassi’s Rolex 24 roster.
“Joey drove with some pretty big names in his car and in the 02. The common denominator between all of them is talent. He fit in well with Juan Pablo and Dixon and the others. He’s just like them: he comes to work with his helmet in his bag, rather than a bag full of money. He’s a professional that fit right in and measured up to all of his teammates. We didn’t discover him; he’s been doing this for a while now, but maybe we just validated his talent.”
Hull’s boss—someone who also doles out praise in small doses—is still beaming about Hand’s performance.
The path for every self-made man varies. For some, independence and self-reliance is discovered during adolescence. For others, like Joey Hand, star of the 2011 Rolex 24 At Daytona, it materializes later in life.
That point was driven home at Daytona, where he shared one of the two Chip Ganassi Racing Daytona Prototypes in a team filled with daunting talent. Teammates like Dario Franchitti, Juan Pablo Montoya and Scott Dixon—men with four combined Indy 500 wins, four Rolex 24 victories and six Indy car titles—could have rattled Hand and thrown him off his game.
But for Hand, one of the scrappiest drivers in North America, racing alongside such famous drivers was taken as a private challenge. Their fame and provenance aside, Hand knew he had one shot to test his skills against them in equal equipment.
If he fared well, perception of his abilities and his place in the sport could be changed forever. If he struggled, he’d be pigeon-holed as little more than a sports car driver who failed to measure up to the greats.
Hand is a familiar name in sports car circles. As one of America’s finest road racers, his role as a leader within the the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing factory BMW ALMS GT team has netted the Sacramento, California native plenty of respect in the closed-wheel community.
But with the chain of events that happened after hitting a tire on pit lane during last month’s Rolex 24, Hand is gaining a new level of notoriety. Clipping a tire while leading with just a few hours to go, serving a stop-n-hold-for-30 (seconds) penalty, and driving back from almost one-minute behind the all-star sister 02 Franchitti/Montoya/Dixon/McMurray car to put his 01 Ganassi entry in a position to win turned Hand into an overnight sensation.
Now, and for the first time in many years, some are beginning to wonder what Hand could do outside of tin-tops and prototypes.
After matching or beating some of the best IndyCar and NASCAR drivers on the planet in identically prepared Riley-BMWs, could the 31-year-old be in a position to add some extracurricular activities to his full-time job with BMW?
Understanding why Hand isn’t currently competing alongside Dario Franchitti or Helio Castroneves in the IZOD IndyCar Series reveals a fascinating aspect of Hand’s drive and determination.
A rising star in the open-wheel ranks during the late 1990s, Hand moved up the ladder to the Toyota Atlantic series with Dede Rogers’ respected DSTP team. DSTP earned the 2000 Atlantic championship with future Indy 500 winner Buddy Rice, and Hand, Rice’s successor in 2001, finished third in the standings as a rookie.
His career hadn’t been easy up to that point, but with Rogers’ help, Hand appeared to be on his way to open-wheel stardom. All of that changed at the mid-way point of his sophomore Atlantic season.
A testing crash at Milwaukee (in the pre-SAFER Barrier era) ended Hand’s season on the spot, as he suffered three broken vertebra, a broken tailbone, a broken knee and broken ribs. At the time of the crash, doctors hailed his use of a HANS Device as a life-saving decision. A long recovery awaited Hand, but that didn’t diminish his enthusiasm.
The 2002 Atlantic championship—the season most people penciled in as one Hand would dominate—was a total write-off. A dream deferred…
With Atlantic costs spiraling out of control and Hand’s season over, Rogers planned to shut down DSTP and liquidate the team. But after witnessing Hand’s resolve to get back behind the wheel, she kept the doors open for one more year. It would be Hand’s final shot at a championship to help launch him to the top.
Fully healed for 2003 but without the massive budget needed to combat the dominant teams, Hand’s season offered little in the way of meaningful results. His dreams of earning a Champ Car or IRL ride never materialized and his name was no longer being mentioned amongst the sport’s next great prospects.
A shooting star in 2001, sidelined in 2002 and all but forgotten in 2003, Hand’s career arc was completely backwards. He was in and out of the open-wheel meat grinder in just three years.
While Rogers’ moral support never waned, Hand’s brief spell in a nurturing, fully-funded environment was replaced by uncertainty and unemployment. As he’d seen happen to many of his friends, once the ladder was removed, most open-wheel drivers tended to fade away, but newly married and with a karting business to support, giving up on becoming a professional race car driver simply wasn't an option.
With his first shot at a career in open-wheel resulting in a misfire, Hand joined the long line of young professionals looking for a paying drive in sports cars. Having to reinvent one’s self at the age of 24 isn’t easy, and as Hand found, the smartest move he could make would be to put the easy days at DSTP behind him.
Expecting his phone to ring with offers of cash and stardom was just the kind of attitude he’d seen other young drivers succumb to, and survival—at least amongst the hundred or more professional drivers looking for the same paid drives he sought—would require a more earnest approach.
Thanks to an opportunity that came earlier in his career—a test drive with the factory PTG BMW GT team he earned as a prize for winning the 1999 Formula Mazda championship—Hand had a number to call when the chapter ended on his open-wheel endeavors.
After impressing PTG boss Tom Milner during his one-day test, a call to inquire about a drive call just prior to the 2004 season was the catalyst for the career Hand has today with the German manufacturer.
Fast-forward to 2011, and after seven years as a factory BMW driver, Hand’s transformational drive at the Rolex 24 has earned the ever-confident driver some richly deserved interest from outside sports car racing circles.
With driving duties for BMW as his anchor, three of the men who’ve been instrumental in Hand’s recent rise to fame—Bobby Rahal, Chip Ganassi and Ganassi’s managing director, Mike Hull—would love to see how Hand performs in a variety of racing cars.
“I love all of this attention for Joey,” said Rahal, Hand’s ALMS team owner. “I think all of the attention he’s getting outside of sports cars is just great. I’d love to run him in an Indy car because I think he’d be really good at it. It really depends on what he wants. In the past I’ve offered IndyCar rides to Jon Fogarty and Alex Gurney, and they turned it down because they weren’t comfortable for whatever reasons, but I’d love to run Joey. I think he’s a good enough driver and also a genuinely good guy.”
Hull, who isn’t known for waxing poetic about his drivers unless it’s absolutely warranted, says having ‘name’ drivers for Hand to benchmark his talent against was a major benefit of being on Ganassi’s Rolex 24 roster.
“Joey drove with some pretty big names in his car and in the 02. The common denominator between all of them is talent. He fit in well with Juan Pablo and Dixon and the others. He’s just like them: he comes to work with his helmet in his bag, rather than a bag full of money. He’s a professional that fit right in and measured up to all of his teammates. We didn’t discover him; he’s been doing this for a while now, but maybe we just validated his talent.”
Hull’s boss—someone who also doles out praise in small doses—is still beaming about Hand’s performance.
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