Indy is awesome!  I want to get that part out of the way early in this post.  Believe it or not this past weekend was the first time I attended the Indy500!  And it certainly was the first time I had raced the night before it!!  Not to mention that Lucas Oil Raceway (IRP to the locals!) was my first race on an oval; so, lots of firsts this past weekend.  In the first three races I have ever run in a formula, or open-wheel, car I have raced on a street course, permanent road course, and now an oval; there is no other series quite like Star Mazda!

The ovals are crazy, fun, exciting, and scary.  We road racers certainly do not give the circle-track guys enough credit.  It might look like it’s easy from the outside but I can assure you there is plenty going on in the cockpit!  Although our racing activities were packed into only two days, I left for Indy on Tuesday night to be there for a few days of press activities and the Mazda Road to Indy Summit.  Our activities included an autograph session with a surprisingly large turnout, a luncheon with various Road to Indy teams, a visit from IndyCar CEO (and great guy) Randy Bernard, a social media presentation by IndyCar driver James Hinchcliffe, and a history lesson from track historian Donald Davidson; talk about a neat way to visit the Brickyard for the first time!

The week leading up to the race was also a great chance to hang out in the Firestone Indy Lights and IZOD IndyCar pit lanes and try to meet some of the teams.  As a young-ish J driver trying to make it into IndyCar, it’s important to try to meet as many people as you can on a race weekend and try to get a feel for the various teams as you never know where you will end up.  Come Friday night it was time to focus on the #27 Jimmy John’s/INDECK machine and figure out what it was going to take to get it going “Freaky Fast.” 

Friday evening practice was really cool.  We had a long session at nighttime under the lights.  We worked through a multitude of changes and I worked on my confidence in running closer and closer to the wall.  At Lucas Oil Raceway the fast way around is to run quite close to the wall for the majority of the lap.  On a small, 5/8 mile track when you are doing over 125mph it’s not as easy as it sounds!  The next day we had two practice sessions before qualifying so it was important for us to buckle down.  I had ended up 9^th on the timesheets on Friday night and I was looking to improve before the race.  The morning session seemed to go fairly well; we ended up in 9^th position again but only 5/10 of a second off of the fast time.  That just goes to show how tight the entire field is and how important it is to gain every fraction of a second that you can.  The second practice we were a bit improved and ended up in 7^th position.  It was a bit sketchy out there as the wind had shifted and was now blowing as a tail wind into Turn 3 which took a lot of the downforce off the car and the rear end was very nervous on entry.  This caught several drivers out and led to me having the biggest sideways moment I have had in a Star Mazda to date!  Luckily, I kept it off the wall and recovered and luckily my friend, and series photographer, Eric McCombs snapped a sequence of pics showing the progression of the massive slide.  One of the pics looks like I am fully drifting my Mazda around the corner; total poster material!

After the practice tuning it was time to qualify and then race.  Qualifications were pretty intense: you run one car on track at a time and you only get two warmup laps and then two flying laps.  The only thing more intense than sitting there quietly in the car waiting to go was going into Turn 1 on your first flying lap just hoping that you have enough temperature in the tires!  I ended up qualifying 9^th which I guess was sort of on-par with where we had been all weekend.  I think we were a bit off on the setup and I don’t think I quite have my oval technique perfected after 3 practice sessions either.  We were then at the mercy of the weather while waiting to take the green flag for the race.  It had been relatively nice all day but ominous clouds had been circling the track sporadically.  It wasn’t until just before the F2000 race was supposed to start that the rain really came down.  Eventually we got the track dried out and we were able to take the green flag about two hours behind schedule.  We still had an amazing fan turnout and the stands were packed.  The fans in Indianapolis are like nowhere else I’ve ever been!

Our race was shortened from 100 laps to 85 in consideration of the late start.  It was really neat to take the green flag underneath the lights (even if our first attempt was waived off).  The first few laps were pretty interesting with some very tight racing and a couple of 2 and 3 wide moments.  After that it strung out a bit and everybody settled into a rhythm.  Unfortunately my rhythm wasn’t quite quick enough and I ended up finishing in 8^th position.  I would have liked to have been further up since I am in such a tight points battle, but I’ll certainly take a top ten finish on my oval racing debut!  I did have a bit of a moment towards the end when I was passing a car in the last corner and lost the front downforce on the car resulting in a light “brushing” of the wall.  It was almost a Hildebrand-like moment but luckily I lifted off as quickly as I could and slid the car evenly into the wall and then continued on my way with no damage.  My apologies to GoodYear as I scraped their label off of the sidewall!

I definitely enjoy the ovals more than I thought I would and I can’t wait to get back into the car at the Milwaukee Mile.  If I thought 125mph felt fast at Indy, Milwaukee is a whole other story!  I am still 6^th place in the overall championship and looking to hopefully advance after the next two oval races are finished.  Those yellow cars (Team Pelfrey) were fast but Tristan, myself, and our new JDC teammate Joao are going to work hard to try and catch them.  Look for the #27 to be Freaky Fast next weekend at ‘the Mile!’

Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter @NickMancusoRace!

Thanks,

Nick