INDYCARNATION

Firestone Indy Lights driver Pippa Mann offers up her latest entry in her 2010 driver diary. This week, she takes us behind the scenes of her first win at Kentucky Speedway.

Just four days after getting home from Chicagoland, it was time to pack another bag and get back on the road to drive down to Kentucky. My race suit was still damp from being washed, and my bedroom looked like a bomb-site with scattered belongings from the unpacking and re-packing of the previous two weeks. And there I was standing in the middle of this mess, looking at my bag and running through the newly extended “race weekend bag” checklist. 

You see racing drivers are not only creatures of habit, but there are times when we could be accused of being somewhat superstitious. For the guys that usually means lucky boxers. For me, it means all the jingly stuff I wear from my ears, around my wrists, and the rings on fingers. Sure, it all comes off when the race suit goes on, but my better half knows better than to make any comment, when I turn our home upside down in a mad panic because I can’t find the latest pair of lucky earrings.

I arrived at the racetrack on Thursday afternoon. From the schedule, Friday was looking like an extremely busy day, so Thursday was a day to get all the mini-chores done. This involved taking all my equipment to tech to get it checked over before the race, making sure my helmet was clean, that I had the right visor on, had tear-offs on ready to go, checking my ear-pieces, hanging the newly clean, still damp suit up in my locker, and folding away the rest of my fire-proofs into their drawers. I spent some time with Kent, my engineer, going over the plan for the next day, and we watched the videos of the previous weekend’s race and the race here in Kentucky last year. We were convinced it was going to be another close race up front for the win.

We only had one session before qualifying on Friday morning. The track was extremely green for our session. This weekend we were running with NASCAR Trucks as well as IndyCar. Those guys not only run a different line to us on the track, but their rubber is very different to ours, and opposites don’t always get along! This made the track slicker and more slippery than we were expecting. I kept looking for traffic to work on my car, and although I knew we were making progress, I wasn’t quite sure. Towards the end of the session before we went into qualifying mode we found a car I was happy with on the inside line or the outside line in traffic. We put a big ring around the set up – this would be our race car.

The next session though, would be qualifying. We did our usual thing - threw some stuff at the car with a set of new tires, and went out to see what we had. Again, as is seemingly becoming normal for this season, we didn’t quite seem to have enough in the clean air. My teammates both ran very similar times on new tires in clean air too. Back in the engineering room there was long discussion between all the SSM engineers about how to make all three cars faster for qualifying.  

Rolling out onto pit lane in the qualifying queue all of our team cars had changes on from the practice session. I was 12th in line, and last of my three team mates to go out on track. 

My first teammate (Philip Major) spun on the track. My second teammate had a moment on one of his laps, but was still fast. J.K. (Vernay) didn’t just communicate over the radio though. He got out of the car, and came shooting down to find my engineer Kent to tell him about his car. Kent relayed the information to me in the cockpit, and quietly, using the tools available to me inside the car, we changed the setup fractionally before I even rolled out onto the track. 

At the white flag, I looked down at the time. I never normally look down on a D-shaped oval, as I don’t normally have the time. I don’t know why I did, but I saw I was 0.02 seconds ahead. My second lap had to be exactly the same, and absolutely perfect. I came across to take the flag - snap. Either my dash wasn’t picking up the beacon, or I’d done an identical time to the nearest hundredth of a second. The radio crackled into life.

“That puts you on the provisional pole.” 

My time and speed stuck. The time gap between me and P2, was so close that those changes we made in pit lane probably made all the difference. My second pole of the year was such a team effort, and I can’t thank JK enough for sharing the information with me after his run. There’s now another check with my name on it that’ll be hanging on the wall of the SSM shop long after I’m gone. As racing drivers, sometimes we are so transient, and only with teams for a short period of time. Pole checks and trophies with your name on are the best way to leave your presence behind in a race shop as a driver after you’re gone.

Last weekend, we just missed out on the pole by the smallest margin, then just missed out on the race too. This time, I couldn’t help but thinking we’d started out the right way. This time we had just enough to snatch the pole, could it turn out we would have just enough to snare the race win too?

On Saturday, we didn’t race until the evening, so I got my lie-in.  Turning up at a race track after noon on Race Day, knowing there’s still over four hours until you get in a car is extremely surreal! It was great not to have an alarm clock rattle me awake, then rush around trying to get showered and ready in the minimum possible time, but by about 3 in the afternoon, I was ready for driver’s briefing, ready to be getting in a car, and trying to keep the ‘I’m bored’ sentiments in my head whilst also trying not to get under the engineers’ feet! 

The start was playing on my mind a little. The last time I started from pole was Indy. That one did not go to plan. I did not get to the first corner first, and just a few laps into the race, that proved to be the only influence I had over my fate. Had I got into the first corner first, I would never have been caught up in someone else’s wreck. This time, I was going to make absolutely sure that my pole translated into my car being first into turn one. No exceptions, no other option, no excuses. 

On the first start I went a little early, and it was waved off. You would have thought this would have made me more nervous, but it actually just made me more determined. The second start was perfect. I got the run into Turn 1 and immediately pulled out a gap to the next car.  Then on lap two, the yellows came out, and then the red flag.  My spotter called for me to go to pit lane, but it was just too late. The rest of the pack behind me were able to filter in, but I was past the entrance, crawling at a snail’s pace towards Turn 4. There had been a big wreck, and there were big pieces of carbon fibre shards everywhere. Somehow I had to creep down to pit lane through this. If I caught just one piece, it could give me a puncture. My shot at the win would be done. I don’t think there has ever been a car driven as slowly, as deliberately, and as nervously down to pit lane.  

When we rolled back out on track for the re-start of the race, it would be green second time by, and a single file start. This time my start was only good, not perfect, and I ran the inside line, side by side with another car through Turns 1 and 2. 

“Outside, outside, outside, still there, still there, outside, outside...”

The balance was just where it had been on the previous run. Through three and four I got my car completely ahead. Back through one and two I started to drop him off my rear corner. Then the words tha

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