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IndyCar
PRUETT: Triple Stint, 12.15
After a brief hiatus, TS is back with Life Is Good, The Swift Swiss, Better Than A 15 Minus, What I Re-Learned In On Track, The Logo and WHF1.
Marshall Pruett  |  Posted December 15, 2009   Oakland, CA
American F1 driver. American F1 car. (LAT)
Hi all -- after a brief post-season pause, Triple Stint is back and chock full o' nutty goodness. As always, email me with your questions and rants to for use in a future column.

Life Is Good

I spent last Saturday and Sunday watching a medley of DTM, V8 Supercars and BTCC on SPEED. I also received and watched the 2009 Le Mans 24 Hours DVD I bought from the good folks at The Motorsport Collector.

I’ve cleared next weekend with my wife to watch the same series once again, and my 2009 Bathurst 1000 DVD is even due to arrive from Australia in time for the motorsports-fest.

No, life doesn’t get much better.

(I’ve mentioned this in a` previous Triple Stint, but it’s worth repeating: When will we be able to buy season review DVDs for the IndyCar Series, Grand-Am and the ALMS? The SCCA recently released 800 minutes worth of a 2009 World Challenge review DVD…and surely they’re working with far fewer resources than the bigger series I’ve just listed. If the production costs would be too high in this economy, how about offering a streaming video package online? Seriously. Someone needs to get on this one, ASAP…what am I going to watch over New Years…)

Good News For Leighton And Davy

I got word today that Leighton Reese will be back for the 2010 Rolex GT series as a part of the new Godstone Ranch Motorsports effort. Using one of Reese’s GXP.Rs, and rebodied as a Corvette, the outfit with work in conjunction with Michael Baughman Racing to run Paul Edwards, 1990 Le Mans winner Davy Jones, Moto legend and emerging Rolex 24 veteran Scott Russell, and series newcomer John McCutchen.

The Baughman camp, along with Jones and McCutchen, will drop off after the Rolex 24, leaving Reese to run Edwards and Russell for the remainder of 2010.

Godstone Ranch Motorsports, a Texas 501(c) (3) non-profit corporation, will also begin raising funds for the Texas Heart Institute in Houston, Texas starting at Daytona and will continue to generate funding throughout the year.

Reese is the source of frequent questions from our readers, and it’s good to see he’ll be back doing what he’s best at in 2010.

The Swift Swiss

With apologies to the other ladies that have leapt from the Atlantic Championship to IndyCars, Simona de Silvestro has seen stronger competition than any of her female predecessors. True, Atlantic car counts have been down, but the quality at the head of the field over the past few seasons has been formidable. And with the experience gained while battling with Hildebrand, Summerton, Edwards and a few others of note, the Swiss driver has sharpened her skills against the best open-wheel talent in North America.
All-time good guy Leighton Reese will be back in 2010 helping to run a charity-based Rolex GT program. (LAT)

All of this has left the bubbly 21-year-old poised to make a successful leap to IndyCar racing. Beyond facing stiff competition, she’s also done one other thing that will allow her to move to IndyCars in a fully prepared state: she didn’t allow herself to get caught up in the kind of hype that saw Katherine Legge and Danica Patrick jump to the big time before they were ready.

Rather than make the move too early (how many times have we seen a young stick-and-ball phenom skip college, go straight to the pros, and then spend years stumbling as they learn all of the invaluable lessons college would have given them?), de Silvestro stayed put, banked three solid seasons in Atlantics, racked up five wins, vied for the 2009 championship, and now, only when she’s ready to make an immediate impact, is she ready to reach for the stars.

While the 2009 Atlantic title managed to elude her, she saved her best for last, making a huge jump in speed and poise at the US Racetronics/Stargate Worlds team this year under the guidance of veteran engineer Burke Harrison. Harrison steered everyone from Robbie Buhl to Jon Fogarty to championships in the feeders series, and it’s no mistake that Simona made huge strides with his influence.

de Silvestro and the Stargate folks are reportedly close to signing a deal, and according to one person involved with her HVM IndyCar test at Sebring, de Silvestro had the look of a driver capable of making an immediate impact in the series.

“She’s ready. I’d have a hard time seeing her qualify outside the Top-10 in her first race. She’s that level of talent. Now, the talent pool continues to get a lot deeper for next season, but she was completely unintimidated by the car, and most of all, her speed was really good. She’s a professional racecar driver, no question. She’s ready to graduate, for sure, and it’s just amazing to think she’s still only 21.”

Newman/Haas/Lanigan ran both Graham Rahal and Hideki Mutoh at Sebring the week prior to de Silvestro’s test, clocking laps between a 54.2 and 54.3. Simona posted a 54.0, and was only bested by ex-HVM driver E.J Viso, giving it his all for Dreyer & Reinbold Racing with a 53.91-second lap about 15 minutes after de Silvestro concluded her running. Viso’s somewhat ragged, on-the-limit outing was concluded with a cloud of tire smoked and locked brakes, sending the Venezuelan down an escape road to end the day.

It was suggested that Viso wasn’t keen on allowing de Silvestro’s 54.0 to stand as fast lap of the day, and his efforts to beat it by .09 took a lot of effort.

De Silvestro was said to be completely unfazed by the car and the jump in speed, and by her third run, began to work with the team to settle the rear of the car under braking. By lunchtime on the first day of testing the team had already completed the “ease the rookie into an IndyCar” portion of the test.

From there, they set straight into working de Silvestro through a number of rear suspension geometry and damper changes – items HVM had been wanting to evaluate for use in 2010 – and were able to use her feedback to make significant improvements to their Dallara-Honda.

For those that are unfamiliar with how most rookie orientation tests go, the fact that de Silvestro was helping HVM to tune their car after only a morning of acclimatization is simply astounding.

If you’re a young talent on the rise, regardless of your gender, and you’re looking for someone to emulate, all I can say is “Do like de Silvestro.” Don’t rush to move up the ladder, look for successful veterans that can teach you about the car and your craft, and once you’re ready, give ‘em hell just like Simona did at Sebring.

How American Are We?

I’ve written a few million words on how we need a stronger American driving presence in IndyCar, but rather than dedicate more ink to a well known issue, I decided to crack open my trusty media guides once again to chart the percentage of American drivers in the sport over the last few decades.

Using the Top-20 ranked drivers from each of the years below, here is a sampling of how ‘American’ the various CART/IRL/ChampCar/IndyCar-based series have been.

1979 (CART’s first season): 95%
1980 (CART): 90%
1981 (CART): 100%
1982 (CART): 85%
1983 (CART): 95%
1984 (CART): 70%
1985 (CART): 60%
1986 (CART): 60%
1987 (CART): 65%
1988 (CART): 60%
1989 (CART): 65%
1990 (CART): 65%
1991 (CART): 80%
1992 (CART): 70%
1993 (CART): 50%
1994 (CART): 45%
1995 (CART): 45%
1996 (CART): 45%
1997 (CART): 35%
1998 (CART): 35%
1999 (CART): 30%
2000 (CART): 20%
2001 (CART): 15%
2002 (CART): 15%
2003 (CART): 15%
2004 (CCWS): 15%
2005 (CCWS): 15%
2006 (CCWS): 5%
2007 (CCWS): 10%

1996 (IRL): 80%
1997 (IRL): 60%
1998 (IRL): 70%
1999 (IRL): 80%
2000 (IRL): 80%
2001 (IRL): 75%
2002 (IRL): 60%
2003 (IRL): 55%
2004 (IRL): 35%
2005 (IRL): 45%
2006 (IRL): 55%
2007 (IRL): 50%
2008 (ICS): 35%
2009 (ICS): 25%

A few conclusions can be drawn. First, I’d forgotten how bad things were for Americans towards the end of ChampCar. (Just 5% in 2006!) Second, as a lot of CART teams shifted over to the IRL in the early 00’s, American drivers saw their numbers drop significantly. Third, as America has become more multi-cultural (at least since CART was first formed), it’s not surprising to see an increasing amount of diversity reflected in our biggest open-wheel series.

IndyCar has made a smart move in aligning a ladder system to try and groom the next generation of open-wheel talent, and while those grids will invariably be filled with young drivers from throughout the world, there’s hope that a few more Americans just might sneak through to the top.

Porsche Drivers Play Musical Chairs

Porsche’s annual Motorsports Banquet didn’t yield the expected news on which drivers will be retained for 2010, but I have an advanced look of how things appear to be shaping up.
Fast, warm and focused. There's not an ounce of 'princess' in Simona de Silvestro's character. For IndyCar fans accustomed to diva-like attitudes with some of the female racers in the series, Simona brings just the opposite. (LAT)

Romain Dumas and Timo Bernhard will be back with Porsche, but don’t currently have a home. I’m hearing that the German marque hopes to find the support to add a second RS Spyder to Cytosport’s LMP2 program, but things are at the earliest possible stage of internal discussion.

Patrick Long and Jorg Bergmeister will be back with Flying Lizard in 2010 as previously announced and Dirk Werner has jumped ship to BMW as they revealed, but the fates of Marc Lieb, Patrick Pilet, Richard Lietz and Wolf Henzler have yet to be confirmed.

I’m hearing Pilet is expected to return to IMSA Performance and Lieb is thought to be headed back to Felbermeyr with Lietz, but Henzler and even Porsche veteran Sascha Maassen are left waiting to learn their fate. Their positions within the factory fold come down to what Porsche Motorsports can do with a smaller operating budget.

Like every manufacturer these days, Porsche has been trimming line items from every area of their budget, including reducing the invites to their annual banquet from 1000 to just over 100.

We’ll continue to hope that Henzler and Maassen find themselves back with Porsche in rides befitting of their talent and tenure.

New Dawn, New Digs

What is eight stories tall, is filled with all of the latest in telecommunications, and brings two previously separate organizations together under one roof?

That would be the new NASCAR and Grand-Am headquarters directly across the street from Daytona International Speedway. Located between the crossover bridge and the Ruby Tuesdays restaurant, the newly merged worlds of stockcars and sportscars represents an incredibly smart integration of two entities that had always lacked the kind of blended co-existence Grand-Am needed to flourish.

It's also noteworthy that most of the email addresses for the Grand-Am staff have changed from @grand-am.com to @nascar.com. It's one big family now, with everyone pulling in the same direction.

With all of their respective departments now sharing the same water cooler, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine Grand-Am being able to better leverage all of the strengths and resources NASCAR has to offer in 2010 and beyond.





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