Stay Tuned
11/30/2009
JR Hildebrand: Life in the Soon-to-Be VERY Fast Lane
Life in the Soon-to-Be VERY Fast Lane -- from the mind of Indy Lights Champion, JR Hildebrand...
Finally I can talk about some real news! I’m sure that there are a few people out there who are wondering how in the world I managed to get myself into a Formula One car for the upcoming test in Jerez, Spain. I’m here to say that I’ll be happy to tell you, while also giving you the rundown of what’s been going on since I’ve been overseas. It’s been a bit of a whirlwind so far, but I’ve gotten the scoop on some pretty trick stuff along the way. And on top of all that, well, I’m going to actually drive a modern F1 car… so I’m pretty pumped about that all by itself! I know it’s going to be a serious challenge, but I’m excited to get after it and see what I can do.
When I started out in racing, I had a lot of people telling me that it’s all about knowing the right people, so make sure to make good impressions. Being ripe in my teens, there was a part of me that always sort of questioned how important that really was, but I took it to heart since it really did make sense (of course it's sometimes annoying when things other people are telling you actually makes sense) and I did what I could.
Case in point:
I grew up in Sausalito, California - a great little city just north of San Francisco. From when I was maybe 12 years old, they had an annual classic car show downtown. My dad would call the police and get permission to drive his ’68 Camaro Trans Am racecar down to town with no mufflers, we’d go hang out for a little while, then just cruise around and see what else was going on.
Every year, in the exact same place, there was a fairly sizable, maybe 8-12 car group, of some of the finest automobiles ever built. D-Type Jag, original 427 Cobra, Ferraris, Mercedes, new cars, old cars - and they were immaculate. And what collection did these belong to according to the description plaque of each car? The Mallya Collection.
After doing a bit of research now, you might find that Dr. Vijay Mallya is a massively successful businessman who has an acute passion for motorsports and now owns the Force India F1 Team. At that time, that final bit of description was not yet applicable. As I got a little older and a little racier, my dad and I started thinking, "Where do all those cars go?" Without giving you too detailed a description, we stumbled upon the answer without even meaning to. And as we stumbled upon the cars, we luckily met the fellow that takes very special care of them, a British ex-F1 man who had worked with Dr. Mallya for many years.
My Dad and I. being true car enthusiasts, formed a friendship with the fellow down in Sausalito and would drop by here and there to see if there was any new machinery or just to say hello. We all got along very well, sharing a strong passion for automobiles and relishing in their history. As my career started progressing, he naturally wanted to know how things were going, so I dutifully added him to my mailing list and kept in touch
as best I could when far away.
Roll forward several years. With this last year being such a success, especially on road courses, the word was passed along. Maybe, out of everyone's persistence, it all became very suddenly worth taking up a bit of interest!
So, a relationship of several years culminated in one short email. I would be off to the UK to have my chance at the team’s simulator along with some pretty highly regarded European talent. That, as you can imagine, was a little bit daunting.
Just a short week after the final race of the Indy Lights season, I found myself jetlagged and sitting in a small B&B, unsure of exactly what I was up to. I had prepared as best as I could to understand the tracks that I might drive on and what the sim would be like, but I felt as though I was fighting the odds, seeing as though I had obviously never driven a Formula One car and didn’t know any of the tracks in person. Nonetheless I figured I had nothing to lose, focused as much as I could, and did my best to adapt and react as quickly as possible. When I left that day, I felt like I must have at least accomplished one of my main goals - which was to not look like that dumb American - but was also uncertain of exactly how things might transpire. Each day that passed I felt like my chances were slowly dwindling, but after a few nailbiting weeks, I finally got word that they had finished reviewing all the data and had picked two of us to stick in the car for the Jerez test… and one of them was me!!!
I arranged some flights, booked some hotels, and managed to drag my bags and gear onto a combination of the subway, trains, and eventually a very amusing cab ride to get to my hotel just a few minutes away from the race shop, which is located just outside the Silverstone Circuit here in Northampton. Over the last week I’ve gotten a thorough crash course in the technology and philosophy behind F1, as well as a bit of insight into the
Force India F1 Team.
Having spent a year up close and personal with an Indycar team, where a huge part of testing and engineering goes into decreasing drag on ovals and searching for mechanical grip on road courses, it was an interesting juxtaposition to find that, given a much more open set of rules, almost everything about an F1 car is designed around the ultimate attainable downforce numbers. The characteristics of the tires, the geometry of the car, the rules that everything is designed around - they all make for a much more different formula for speed than I was originally expecting. I read my fair share of racing and engineering magazines, but it was pretty impressive to really understand the magnitude of how intense the car and its abilities truly are - every little curve in the body, every angle,
every dimension. You hear about how many people are employed by F1 teams to design wind-tunnel models, do CFD work and develop the car, but until you see the army of engineers working hard every day it’s hard to really get a sense for how impressive it all really is.
With the test rapidly approaching, I’m getting more and more anxious to get in the seat and start to figure things out. Not having any real sense for what it will be like, it’s hard to know what specific challenges I will face. I’ve always trained hard but have added a lot of neck exercising to my regime lately as I imagine the braking and deceleration forces to be quite shocking. I’m hoping to learn as much as I can as quickly as I can, while trying to make the most out of the whole situation, regardless of where things go down the road. I don’t expect it to be easy, but I’ve always loved a good challenge and am looking forward to taking this one on.
J.R. Hildebrand Racing
Web: JRHildebrandRacing.com
Sparco Motor Sports Inc.
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Irvine, CA 92614
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