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INDYCAR: Hildebrand’s Toronto Hustle
Even with mechanical problems limiting his ultimate speed, watching JR Hildebrand powerslide around Toronto was pure Heaven…
Marshall Pruett  |  Posted July 13, 2012  
JR Hildebrand's three-wheeling act on Friday and Saturday at Toronto was a sight to behold. (Photo: Marshall Pruett)
In a perfect world, a driver’s effort behind the wheel should be matched with an equal amount of speed from his or her car.

Take the talent and determination of a top-caliber driver, combine it with a high performance machine like an Indy car, and in theory, poles and wins should follow.

But what if the equation is slightly off? What if the driver is lacking the final few percent that’s needed to extract everything from the car? Or, in the case of Panther Racing’s JR Hildebrand during portions of last weekend’s event in Toronto, what if the car is incapable of producing the lap times the driver and team needs?

Thankfully, the answer provided by the 24-year-old was to try and fix the equation by driving over the limit for as long as possible in practice and again qualifying.

What resulted was Hildebrand putting on a show that looked more like Sebastien Loeb on a WRC stage than a young IndyCar driver trying to keep things neat and tidy within the confines of a concrete-lined street circuit.

Often sideways and on three wheels, Hildebrand was nothing short of spectacular as he used equal doses of force and faith to get the Chevy-powered No. 4 to stop and turn like the rest of the cars on track.
The young American has shown he's willing to stand on the gas and push into a comfort zone that isn't possessed by every driver in the IndyCar Series. (Photo: Marshall Pruett)

“The thing we struggled with was brakes,” said Hildebrand. “We had a bad batch of brakes or something like that. The data said we had something going on with the brake temp sensors. We realized after we got the readouts, we had one rear wheel that wasn’t doing anything. We had 600 [°C] brake temps for three wheels and one that was 100 [°C]… We were getting [brake] pressure to that wheel, too, but it wasn’t stopping the car so it was a pretty twitchy deal.”

The other option—to dial things back and drive within the car’s capabilities--would have left Hildebrand even further down the time sheets and, more importantly, without the chassis setup information his engineers needed to make improvements for the 85-lap race.

“We had a lot of issues through practice which makes it hard to figure the car out so we could qualify higher,” Hildebrand remarked. “We do great in the races, but it’s the prep work before then that really matters. We got the brake issue sorted out, but then in qualifying, the [brake] bias adjuster wasn’t working so we had too much bias to the rear and we baked the rear tires. You do your best despite the handicaps you’re given, but you also hope you don’t have anything holding you back. That’s what we’re working towards.”
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