Windermere, Fla. (May 31, 2011) — I have just returned home from a very busy week in Indianapolis. It started on Wednesday with the Mazda Road to Indy Summit which carried over to Thursday. Friday I was practicing for my race at Lucas Oil Raceway, the race was Saturday night with more practice and qualifying earlier that day. And of course, Sunday I went to the Indianapolis 500. Overall the Summit was very interesting. We listened to James Hinchcliffe talk about how to use social media to our advantage and we were given a tour around the museum and Chip Ganassi Racing’s shop. It’s great for us to have the support from IndyCar and Mazda that organize these events, I have learned a lot over the course of the Summit in St. Petersburg and Indy.
Friday morning I was on a television segment with Johnny Unser on Fox59. We talked about the Night Before the 500 event as well as Cooper Tires and the importance of tire safety. From there I went over to the Speedway to watch the Freedom 100 Indy Lights race. Wow, it was amazing, they were going three wide almost every lap! Unfortunately I had to leave half way through the race to go to Lucas Oil Raceway to prepare for my practice session. We had a three-hour session Friday afternoon, which was great because we had a lot of things to try on the car. We made lots of progress throughout the session and ended up running very competitive times.
On Saturday we had two 30-minute practice sessions to prepare for qualifying. We made some small changes overnight but nothing too dramatic and when I went out for practice it felt like a completely different car. Unfortunately it felt different in a bad way, the car had lost lots of grip and I was working hard just to keep it out of the wall. We tried many things throughout the practice but couldn’t find the balance we had on Friday. Qualifying was more of the same and I could only manage fifth. For the race we changed a few more things hoping that we could settle the car. Just as we were about to pull out onto the track to start the race it began to rain! Eventually it stopped but the track had to be dried. The race was delayed over two hours and we started around 9:30 pm! I made a very good start and got up to second in turns one and two and tried to pass for the lead going into turn three but I couldn’t make it stick. When we caught lap traffic I was held up very badly and fell back to fifth. After 70 laps I finished fourth. I was running the same times as the guy who finished second so we know we had a competitive car. My engineer Andy and I spent a long time discussing what to do to the car and we made big improvements for the race. I am still second in the championship and our next race is at the Milwaukee Mile June 19.
Sunday was the first time I had ever gone to the Indy 500 and what a one to go to. The last 10 laps were incredible and one of the most exciting ends to a race I have ever seen. Overall I had a great week in Indy, I learned a lot about racing on ovals and we will be even stronger in Milwaukee.
Big thanks to all of my sponsors: MAZDASPEED Motorsports Development, Skip Barber, Andretti Autosport, California Scents, Parathyroid.com, RaceLite Protection, Sparco, Illinois Anesthesia, Eye Health Partners and Silver Knight Racing.
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