INDYCAR: Decision Time For Gustavo Yacaman

IndyCar

INDYCAR: Decision Time For Gustavo Yacaman

After four years in Indy Lights, 21-year-old Gustavo Yacaman is deciding whether to roll the dice in IndyCar or switch to sports cars.

Marshall Pruett | Posted November 16, 2012

With his apprenticeship completed in the Firestone Indy Lights Series, should Yacaman follow his heart into IndyCar? (Photo: IndyCar Series)

Firestone Indy Lights driver Gustavo Yacaman is loaded with personality and talent, but the 21-year-old Colombian can’t rely on those ingredients alone to become an IndyCar driver.

With four years of Lights experience accumulated at such a young age, the Miami resident has the reached the point on the Mazda Road To Indy where it’s time to move up and move on. But at a point where most Lights drivers are fixated on the allure of IndyCar racing, Yacaman is taking a wise-beyond-his-years approach to which direction he follows.

Instead of relying on emotions to fuel his career decisions, Yacaman told SPEED.com he’s more interested in looking at the big picture--charting a path that will keep him employed for the next 20 years or more—than scraping his way into the IndyCar Series on financial fumes.

The personable Yacaman brings speed and character to any paddock. (Photo: IndyCar Series)

“There’s two ways of looking at this—the business perspective and the ‘wish’ perspective; what I want and what I dream,” he said. “I want to become an IndyCar driver, to win the championship and to win the Indy 500. But what I don’t want to is to make miracles try to happen to get there for one year because it’s so expensive. And if things don’t go perfectly—maybe we have some mechanical issues or don’t have the results when I’m a rookie that we need—I’d have no chance of coming back for a second year.”

The list of Indy Lights and GP2 drivers who’ve scraped their way into IndyCar or F1, only to find themselves sitting on the sidelines after one season has weighed heavily on Yacaman’s mind.

“The way we get sponsors is getting top 5s, getting on the podium…winning,” he said. “If we have a bad season, it’s improbable we’ll find the money to keep going. And am I willing to take that risk? You have to hope for the best but plan for the worst. You have to think about these things.”

With Yacaman erring on the side of practicality--looking for ways to forge a career that avoids the peaks and valleys so many young drivers experience, he’s taking stock of his sponsors and the best way to keep them engaged.

Based on the economics of what it’s taken to graduate from Lights series, Yacaman says the cost to become an IndyCar driver in 2013 equals what’s been spent on the open-wheel ladder from 2007 to 2012.

“I don’t want everything I’ve done up to this point to be wasted,” he explained. “I’ve got to be realistic. We’ve been spending on average of a million dollars a year for four years on running Lights. We spent $600,000 a year running F3 in Spain. So, now we’re going to spend that same amount of money we’ve spent the last six years on one year in IndyCar?

Gustavo Yacaman has gained more open-wheel experience by the age of 21 than most of his competitors, and now has a tough choice ahead on where to take his career. (Photo: IndyCar Series)

"If you add that in, we’re probably at $12 million on my career, and you have to ask when [that investment] is going to come back. You have to look at that as well.”

In a nutshell, that’s Yacaman’s dilemma.

Should he roll the dice with his dozen or so sponsors on a rookie season in IndyCar and risk losing them for 2014 if things don’t go according to plan? Or should he re-route his career to sports cars where the costs are much lower and he can race well into his 40s?

Does he aim for the stars or play it safe? It’s a heady decision to make for a college-aged kid to make.

“We’re looking at the GRAND-AM side where a season would cost one to two million,” he said. “We could make a lot out of that for our sponsors and I could also make a living from it—make a life out of it. And hopefully I’d eventually get picked up by a factory team. I might not make a million dollars out of it, but if I keep up the good results each year, I can continue to sell that in Colombia and make a good living.”

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