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INDYCAR: De Silvestro Confident For Second Indy 500
Simona De Silvestro’s season should have started off as a complete mess, but the sophomore IndyCar driver is headed into the 500 with plenty of momentum.
Marshall Pruett  |  Posted May 18, 2011   Indianapolis, IN
Simona De Silvestro's positive outlook is one of many traits that has helped the second-year IndyCar driver moving forward in the series. (IMS Photo)


Simona De Silvestro’s season should have started off as a complete mess.

A last-minute change in the engineering department before the season opener in St. Petersburg was a perfect recipe to derail all of the momentum the 22-year-old built heading into her sophomore season as an IZOD IndyCar Series driver.

Think of Peyton Manning finding out he has a new offensive coordinator to work days before the first game of the season (well, provided we have an NFL season), and that’s a fairly close description of how disruptive a change in engineers can be for a driver.

De Silvestro handled the switch with her usual poise and positivity, and went on to score a fourth-place finish with Brent Harvey now calling the shots on her No. 78 Nuclear Clean Air Energy-sponsored HVM Racing Indy car.

The next few races didn’t go as smoothly as they’d hoped, but De Silvestro and Harvey appeared to hit their stride at the last round in Brazil.

According to the young Swiss driver, the race around the streets of Sao Paulo gave the team the boost it needed with the Indy on the horizon.

“Brazil was the first time we unloaded fast off the trailer, right from the get-go, so that was cool,” she told SPEED.com. “So now we’re onto the ovals for the first time this year, and Brent is really strong on them because that’s his background. That makes me really confident knowing he’s so experienced here at Indy.

"As a driver, it gives you that extra little bit of confidence every time you go out, you know it’s going to be good. And if we need to make things better, you know you have the right guy to do that for you.”

It takes a driver more than just a handful of events to build a proper rapport with an engineer, and at a daunting track like Indy, knowing each other’s short-hand is key to being successful.

It can be somewhat of a black art for an engineer to understand exactly what a driver wants from the car's handling, and more than a few drivers have struggled to interpret just what an engineer expects the car to do on the track, but as De Silvestro has found, she and Harvey seem to speak the same engineering language.
Compared to some of the brooding drivers in the paddock, De Silvestro's sense of humor is also a welcome sight in the IndyCar Series. (IMS Photo)

“Our communication is going really well; we need to work on our setup a bit and to get it closer to what I like, but he’s starting to 'get me' and what I want from the car. For only working together for a few races so far, we've being doing really good together. We haven’t really done a lot of practice at Indy yet. It was only one run and we tried like two changes. It has been good, though, and we’re learning more about working on the ovals together.”

De Silvestro started 22nd and finished 14th last year in her first trip to the Indy 500. She earned Rookie of the Year honors for her performance, but despite being a quick study around the 2.5-mile oval, De Silvestro says losing Sunday and Tuesday’s practice session due to rain has been a challenge to deal with.

“Yeah, there’s a little bit of anxiety. I want to be out there getting more miles, for sure. But, also, when we went out on Saturday, we were flat out on the third lap. Again on Monday, the car was good, because we did four or five laps, so my confidence is building. I wish we had more laps, so maybe we’ll get some more time tomorrow and Friday to get more comfortable.

"The week is long, and we get more practice than we usually have at other races, so it’s just about how you choose to look at it. We just think about last year, about what we learned, and then we can build off of that.”

There’s another challenge De Silvestro—and most of this year’s Indy 500 drivers—have faced, and that’s dealing with the boredom that comes during rain delays. She learned her lesson last year, and the "Swiss Miss" made sure to come to Indy fully prepared this time…

“Last we only had one rain day, but now we’ve already had two…I made sure to have a lot of TV shows on my iPad and we’re talking about bringing in some board games for the team… It’s really cool because we all get along so well so we can stand around and talk for hours, but we want to try to have some fun when we have nothing else to do. Maybe I need to add that game ‘Angry Birds’ to my iPad to we can play that, too…”

Follow Simona De Silvestro on after every race with her IN THE COCKPIT column for SPEED.com.

Marshall Pruett is SPEED.com's Auto Racing Editor, covering IndyCar and sports cars. He also contributes to Road & Track and Racecar Engineering. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.
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