Spencer Pigot – Fun and Variety

Corby, England (October 29, 2010) – The past few days have been a lot of fun. We have gone to a football (soccer!) match, raced go-karts, and visited Lola Cars as well as iSport International. Unfortunately we haven’t been able to do anymore testing in the Kent cars to prepare for the Walter Hayes Trophy Race in a few weeks time. The tracks have changed their schedules for the days we were planning on testing. Thankfully, we will have quite a lot of practice time at Silverstone during the days leading up to the event.

I was able to find tickets to go see Manchester United play a Carling Cup match earlier on this week. I am a huge fan and so is Peter Dempsey so we got four tickets and Felix, Cliff, Peter and myself all went. The first half was a little boring and there were no goals but the second half was great! In the end United won 3-2 with a very late goal and the stadium went crazy! It was an awesome way to end the match. The next night we did a charity go-kart race for 21&CO Charity. Our team comprised Felix, Emma Dempsey and me.. The kart we were assigned was a little slow but it was still a lot of fun. We ended up finishing third and were able to help a charity so it was a good night.

On Thursday we went on two tours, one of Lola Cars and then GP2 Championship- winning team iSport International. When we got to Lola there was one of Sebastien Bourdais’ Champ Cars and a very old Lola that ran at the Indianapolis 500 sitting in the lobby.

Sam Smith who is in charge of the marketing side of Lola took us through the entire factory. We got to see the 45 percent-scale wind tunnel, the shaker rig, the ovens where they cure the carbon fiber, and we also got a quick explanation of CFD which is a program on the computer which allows the designers to test new aerodynamic pieces much quicker and cheaper than testing them in the wind tunnel.

It was really interesting and I learnt a lot of new information about how cars are built and a lot about the company in general. Not only do they build race cars but the also unmanned aircraft for the government which was really neat to learn about.

In the afternoon we went to see iSport. The team principal Paul Jackson showed us around the shop and we got a chance to check out their simulator, which looked a lot of fun to drive. We also saw bits and pieces of the new 2011 GP2 car, awaiting to be assembled. We are heading over to Ireland tonight to spend a few days at the Dempseys’ house before we fly back over to England next week for some more tours.

Thanks to Lola and iSport for taking us around their facilities and the Team USA Scholarship for organizing everything. This trip continues to be a great education outside of the cockpit as well as in it!