When you finish reading a fairy tale, the ending is always "happy ever after." When you finish watching a feel-good movie, the words may not flick across the bottom of the screen, but they're always there in your head. Happy ending complete. Story over. Well, by qualifying for this year's Indy 500, with me as a one-off entry, rookie driver in my very first IndyCar event, we may have already had our very own happy ending and real life feel-good story. This time, though, the story doesn't stop there. Now we have a race to try and get ready for. Oh, and it's not just any race. It's only the biggest IndyCar race of the whole entire year...
So far, most of what I've been doing while in the car has been what I do best – driving it. The tools to adjust the front and rear bar settings from inside the cockpit, and to move the weight across from the right rear to the left front or vice versa, are very similar to those in an Indy Lights car and fairly familiar. To get to the point, this means that most of the time so far I've been able to do a pretty good job of not looking too much like a rookie out there, and instead looking like I know what I'm doing. I've been smiling and making a lighthearted joke of the fact I haven't even done a pit stop yet. Suddenly it doesn't seem quite so funny...
On Wednesday afternoon, I carved a solid two hours into my schedule that were not allowed to be interrupted by any PR duties. One week earlier I would have been hard pushed to have enough media to fill a two-hour block, but now I was taking my schedule and putting a big black box that wasn't allowed to be filled. I am currently in demand because I qualified to compete in the race. However, to actually compete in the race, there is an awful lot I have to learn and digest in a very short space of time. Pit stops don't even being to cover the half of it.
If you have ever seen an IndyCar steering wheel, you will know that they are covered with buttons, switches and dials. Admittedly they're nothing like as busy as those Formula 1 wheels, but it's still the busiest wheel I've ever had to deal with, by quite some margin. In my upper left quadrant I have four buttons, lower left two, upper right three and lower right three more. I don't want to say I only know what half of them do, but at this stage I've certainly only ever used half of them. For the race, I will probably need all of them...
To add to the tools I described a couple of paragraphs above, I also have an oil bypass lever down by my left side which I will need to move during the race depending on how the temperature changes, how much dirty air I'm in, and every time we're under yellow. I also need to move my fuel map at the same time between green and yellow settings. I have a push-to-pass button to play with, and if things go wrong I need to know how to work the emergency modes so that if it's just a sensor going down I can keep running, or if it's something more serious I don't end up with a big engine bill...
Coming into the pits, I've already been using the pit lane speed limiter, but we've had to pit off the back stretch all week long until Carb Day. On Friday, I will get to attack the speed limit line at pit entry, at serious speed for the first time. And it's not just slowing down. For the first time ever I will be leaving the pits on four, stone-cold, brand-new tires, and trying to get through the warm-up lane, back onto track, and then back up to speed as quickly as possible. And while I'm doing that there's going to be plenty of people around me already running at full speed, at over 220mph – all looking to try and exploit any potential weakness. Blinking is not allowed.
And that's after I've got myself back onto the track. Before that I have to get the car back out of the pit box. All week long we have been launching the car nice and steadily to save rear tires. It's been taking first gear and waiting with the clutch in to get waved out. Now, with the fuel probe on the pit stops, I'm not even going to be able to take first gear until a split second before it's time to go. My sequence of how I pull away is going to have to be considerably condensed, and the only practice I'm going to get at that is going to be on Carb Day.
To complete the pit stop, and if I launch it OK, I'm going to have to launch into traffic. In testing the outside lane has always been clear, but now my habit has to change and I need to learn to launch into the inside slow lane, because unless there are two cars coming, if one is coming in the fast lane, I will be sent. And the whole way down pit road people will be doing the same thing to me once I get out to the outside lane. I have to put my faith in these guys that they're going to stick to their lane and not keep coming, because if I even think about hesitating, I will lose that spot. Hesitation, just like blinking, is also not allowed.
Plus, of course, while all this is going on, I need to remember to reset all my in-car tools to where they were at the start of the previous run so that I don't end up with a handling imbalance on my fresh new tires. Good job I don't have anything else going on at the same time to think about!
There's also fuel saving. I have never driven any kind of racecar where it is necessary to save fuel. This applies to both yellow and green flag running. I have now had both procedures explained to me, and while under green saving fuel is tricky to do, it is at least easy to explain. In theory, the procedure for saving under yellow should be fairly easy, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't nervous about the possibility of it going wrong. Just about everything I have done under yellow in junior formula racing is now discounted until the very last lap under yellow. Plus, of course, there are all the switches and buttons that I need to put back while I'm getting ready to go, too. No pressure then.
Talking of fuel, you're talking to a girl who has yet to do a full-tank run. That doesn't apply just to Indy – we're talking ever. Never run one single full-tank lap in an IndyCar, let alone a full-tank run. I know what you're thinking – this could be interesting. Yeah, I'm starting to think that, too...
Next there's my dash. I've been using one page since I got here, and after a couple of days of running, I knew where everything was on it. However, that's my practice page. And while I can still get back to it during the race with another couple of flicks of yet another switch on my wheel, for most of the time in the race I need to run on the race page. I have a new set of different information to digest – including those all-important fuel numbers.
And, of course, obviously I still have to drive the thing. So far, admittedly, I've been doing OK in that department, but most of my running has been done in clean air, and on Sunday at noon, I will be coming down to take the green flag with a whole face full of dirty air from the 30 cars starting in front of me. I've run an Indy Lights car enough times in the dirty air of two or three cars to know that's going to make my life very interesting, too. How interesting, I have yet to find out...
On Carb Day I will get to practice some of these things a little, but one hour is not a lot of time. I always knew coming into this event that qualifying alone was going to be a very big deal, and that I was throwing myself full force into the deep end without water wings to find out whether I could swim or not. But I think I've only just discovered that I have a fairly good collection of lead weights tied to me, too.
Maybe I underestimated the challenge ahead of me coming into this. Two things however, are certain. Firstly, I never go down without a fight, and secondly, don't bet against me – I'm a strong swimmer.
Pippa