IndyCar: Notebook from Palm Springs Wednesday – Part 1
The NTT INDYCAR Series is back for Day 2 of Media Content Day. Here are the highlights from the short interviews with the other half of this season’s drivers.
Callum Ilott – #77 Juncos Hollinger Racing Chevrolet
Callum Ilott is starting his second season with Juncos Hollinger Racing. Last season, the team proved not to be so little and qualified second on the grid for the season’s final race at Laguna Seca Raceway.
The British driver was asked what he needed to work on for this season. A very confident answer followed.
“My race craft has always been slightly weaker than the qualifying side of things, so definitely that scenario for me to work on.”
“I think, like in Laguna, I proved that if we had a car that’s competitive, that’s what I can do with it, and on the qualifying side. It’s kind of up to the team to give the car on the weekend. Of course I work as much as possible for it, but there’s only so much a one-man show can do in a year.”
“If I am really, how would I say, factual, I’m very quick. If you put me in the quickest car, I don’t think there’s many people quicker than me, honestly. Looking at Laguna, we had a good car and I was able to put it there.”
“I’ll be saying the whole year, once it’s there, I can always compete with it. So that’s up to them to do it. I rarely make mistakes in qualifying.”
“If it’s slow, it’s partly maybe 5 percent of the time it could be me. It’s a bit — I feel a bit cocky to say it, but I can tell them when I’ve nailed it and when I’ve not. Normally I’m quite honest if I messed up.”
“With the races and stuff, we’ve had incidences where I’ve made mistakes and made the wrong decisions under a bit of pressure. We’ve had instances, like Iowa was a good example, where we had great pace race but couldn’t keep up in the pit stops, so you lose four or five positions every pit stop, which is painful to do, but it’s just the way it goes.”
Ilott will have a new teammate, Augustine Canapino, the oldest rookie this season. Ilott was asked how he felt about his new teammate.
“It’s a tough one because of the position that he’s in. It’s a bit of an unknown for me, for the team, for the championship, because for sure he’s quick. But again, it’s a real really tough thing to jump into.”
“I’m a bit nervous for him, and I admire the jump because it’s not easy to do. Obviously, Scott McLaughlin has done it in, shall we say, a different environment, but he’s done it, and Agustin has that background but from Argentina.”
“But I think the ovals, that’s going to be a bit different, again, having a teammate, as well, to at least share some feelings on is going to be very helpful.”
“It’s more I have to wait and see where we’re at and what we’re doing because it could be more of a data thing or it could be really something that we can work together as a team and build off of.”
“But I know it’s definitely not easy as a rookie, but then taking my own experience, we worked really well together as a one-car operation compared to big four-, five-car operations, and sometimes we kick their ass.”
“But that gives me the confidence that no matter what, I can kind of work with what we’ve got and do a good job with it.”
Will Power – #12 Team Penske Chevrolet
Will Power, the 2022 NTT INDYCAR Series Champion, is starting his eleventh year with Team Penske. The veteran has changed his personality over the years and appears calmer and more relaxed.
“I am really excited. Last time I drove the car was at Laguna, so very excited to get back in, get moving again, get things rolling.”
“Yeah, it’s the way it is these days, so you’ve got simulators that you can go through setup items and somewhat keep shot. It’s never the same as the real car. There’s no substitute for being in the real car.”
The Australian is also interested in go-karts and teaches young drivers how to race in the karts. Power was injured at a go-kart event in the offseason but has fully recovered.
“I love go-karting. It’s a lot of fun. It’s very intense, very competitive. Also, that’s somewhere you can get some race fitness for sure because you’ve actually got some G-forces. The simulator you get obviously the steering so you can work on your arms, but you actually get neck and whole body in the go-kart. I just love karting. I have since I was a kid. I do it for fun, and it keeps me sharp.”
” The confidence, I just think the older you get, the more comfortable you are with the situation. You just naturally gain confidence. You know your strengths. You know your weaknesses. You know how to extract the most out of yourself. That’s kind of what I’ve been doing.”
“I would say I don’t have much pressure at this time in my career, so it’s all about the craft and getting the most out of it.”
“Yeah, it’s a good space to be in.”
Graham Rahal – #15 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda
Graham Rahal is starting his 16th IndyCar season, eleventh with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing. Last season was very disappointing for the entire team.
The American was asked what was happening to change things for this season.
“I feel really good about where we’re at. As I was thinking about this exact kind of media conference last year, I was pretty reserved in some of my comments about the outlook, and I was thinking about it this year, I feel a lot more positive.”
“I think Stefano (Sordo) has done a great job as he’s come in, but I think also organizationally from the team perspective we seem to be in a much better place. Everybody is working towards achieving the same goals.”
“The engineering side is more focused I would say. Not that they weren’t last year, but I would say more focused on the right things and not spending time doing things that aren’t moving the program forward.”
“I feel really good about where we stand.”
“I think what we needed most was pretty simple, and that’s just direction. I thought that from the top on down, we needed a clearer path, from the engineering corps in particular. We didn’t have a technical director. We didn’t really have somebody that was leading the charge. We didn’t have enough depth.”
“That’s becoming clearer to us now that we know like what McLaren is doing. With Stefano coming in you see what all they’re doing, and we were not even in the ballpark as far as depth and stuff like that. We’ve learned that now. We’ve been able to add. We’ve gotten ourselves into a really good spot.”
“You see, though, it’s not like we’ve fired a bunch of engineers. Our guys are good. We’ve got good people. But we needed direction, and we needed somebody to kind of stand up and go, no, this is a — I’m not going to say what it is, but there was some testing we’ve done for a while that we’ve all been saying, this is worthless, we’re getting nothing out of it, but we kept getting told, no, we’ve got to do it.”
“Luckily Stefano comes in and says, that’s worthless. Why are you doing that? Thank goodness. Here’s somebody else who can back up what we’ve been saying for a long time. Now we can focus our energy. Engineers aren’t doing all these crazy projects. It’s just let’s focus on what actually can move the needle.”
“I thought that’s what Stefano really brought to the table. Kind of helped drive us a little bit better, so I’m really excited about that. We’ve obviously all talked about Ryan Harbar a lot this off-season. I gave him — he’s our trainer, head of human performance for us.”
Helio Castroneves – #06 Meyer Shank Racing Honda
Helio Castroneves, the four-time winner of the Indy 500 and recent winner of the Rolex 24 hours race last weekend, still has the zest for driving with Meyer Shank Racing.
“The expectation is obviously always to do well, but also we understand the possibility of things not going according to the plan.”
“But I feel the plan is that. It takes some time to collect some of the information that we want, our alliances with Andretti Autosport also is still very strong. They also know that they need to improve. It’s not only in our organization.”
“We still keep pushing each other so that we can have a better result like we had in the past or that Andretti had in the past.”
“For us, remember, the alliance, they have their own engineers, their own resource, they translate it to us, and yeah, we’re looking forward to having a much better season, and let’s hope for the best.”
Scott Dixon – #9 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda
Scott Dixon is looking for his seventh championship in the NTT INDYCAR Series, starting his 22nd season with Chip Ganassi Racing. Finishing third in the championship last season, the Kiwi talked about this year’s expectations.
” I think this team always has a really strong lineup, but this year I think obviously welcoming another Kiwi to the team is always great. It’s good to see the young talent coming through and having three of us in the series, been a long time since we’ve had any other than myself, so it’s nice to see that progression.”
“But yeah, excited for the new year. I think the lineup and obviously you try to have as much as you can to have a constant in all the cars, I understand what they did with Marcus and Takuma, so that lineup over there is going to be really strong. Looking forward to it.”
“I think every year you have your ups and downs. I think the biggest thing for me is that you’re still constantly learning. Each weekend there’s something different, which I think is what makes it so much fun and interesting, I think, for anybody that’s involved.”
“Consistency is sometimes good and change is sometimes good. I really loved and enjoyed working with (Michael) Cannon. I thought he was a tremendous guy and had great insight and did a hell of a job for our team, and obviously he’s moved on to different things now.”
“But yeah, looking forward to starting the season strong with Ross, my new engineer, and been really impressed so far with his just way of thinking, his aggressiveness. He’s a pretty young guy, too, but he already has — I think with the people that he’s worked with at Coyne, he’s a young person but with some kind of older concepts and understanding of the sport.”
Roman Grosjean – #28 Andretti Autosport Honda
Roman is starting his second season with Andretti Autosport. In the offseason, he took flying lessons and got his pilot license.
“I got bored of waiting in the airports so I thought I was going to fly myself and do my pilot’s license. It’s actually something I wanted to do for a long time. It was very complicated in Europe to do the pilot license, to go to the ground school twice a week, and with our life it’s impossible. I decided to tackle it and went through it pretty fast, so having a lot of fun with that.”
“Went twice at St. Pete just to land on the start-finish line, and that was pretty cool. The guy, the air traffic control was like, yeah, left on acre five, turn, and then back. I was like, oh, yeah, going over the racetrack, I’ll take it, and I go back to the pit lane I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, that’s true. So it was quite funny.”
“I’ve wanted to do it since I’m 30 years old, so not that long ago, but some years ago. Being with Alexander Rossi, flew his plane to some races last year. I thought that was pretty cool. I thought, okay, I’ll look into it. Found a school what I could all the theory online.”
“So actually I started doing the theory in Nashville. That’s when I started getting the first book online, and since then I’ve done my private pilot license, my multiengine license, my instrument flight rating license, and I’ve got 115 hours of flight time, I think.”
“Commercial by the end of the year, so then I can take Roger (Penske)– Roger can pay me to fly him around to races if things go bad with racing.”
The Frenchman talked about his impression of the team and their expectations for this season.
“I think we’ve got a strong lineup again, with Kyle joining in. We know Kyle is a very fast driver, so it’s going to be exciting to have him on board.”
“We know what Colton is capable of. I think I’ve got some experience. I’ve got one year of experience with the team. We’ve made some — we’ve worked hard during the winter on my side, but also on Tim’s side. I think last year wasn’t the year that we wanted.”
“Everyone has been working really hard and I’m excited. I think everyone that you’re going to see today or you saw yesterday in the room is excited. Everyone thinks that he’s got an amazing win to break, and has done more work than the others, but I don’t know, time will tell, track will tell us, but we feel like we’ve done some good steps.”
“I think also for Olivier and myself it will be easier in year two as a team. Olivier has had the whole winter break to do his stuff, whereas last year we came in and was like almost ready to go.”
“I’m excited about that. But what I’m excited about the most is that I am genuinely looking forward to jumping back in an INDYCAR, and that’s a feeling I like having, because that means I still love more than anything — well, I love my job a lot and I want to go racing.”
Lucille Dust reporting live from Palm Springs, California