Photo Credit: Wikipedia
Our fourth guest for IndyCar All Access is IndyCar and Indy Lights driver Pippa Mann. As Pippa, is sitting on the sidelines sadly, we’ve taken the time to ask her a few questions.
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Q: What is your favorite racing memory?
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This one is easy… qualifying for the 2011 Indy 500! Trying to qualify for the Indy 500 as your first ever IndyCar race is not an easy feat, and with the competition to just get in the show last year, the pressure was intense. Riding out the ups and downs of the week of testing, sitting out through the rain delays, running into trouble on pole day, the boys tearing the car apart and putting it back together again that night… There were times when I genuinely didn’t know whether we were going to make it or not. But we did, and I am so proud of all the guys who worked so hard on my car during that month to make it happen!
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Q: What is your favorite track and least favorite track, explain why your answer is so?
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My favourite track back at home in the UK was always Donington. It’s a track with fast flowing corners, and where being smooth with your inputs and sensitive to the messages the car is giving you is the fastest way around. Once I started racing in Europe I fell in love with Estoril, a track in Portugal with many similar characteristics as Donington, and a superfast, extremely long right hander onto the main straight. In Europe we call those types of corners ‘parabolicas’ and I was extremely good at getting the car balanced right where it needed to be through that corner to be able to pass people at the end of the main straight. The feel and balance of the car to be fast through a parabolica actually has a lot of hints towards driving on an oval – which I think is what eased my transition once I came over here to the States. My favourite road course here in the US… I think Somona. It feels like one of the big European tracks I grew up on back home, and again I love the fact that being smooth and using my sense of feel can make me fast around there. Favourite track overall? Well there’s only one answer to that isn’t there?! Indianapolis Motor Speedway!
Tracks I don’t like have actually been fewer and farther between. Sometimes I don’t do well at a track, but I can still see the challenge in it, and I still like it because I want to conquer it. However there have been a couple of places over the years… Starting back home again – there is a track in Budpest, Hungary called the Hungaroring. It was so bumpy the whole way around it masked a lot of the signals that I normally read from the car, and it’s the type of track where being smooth seems to net you very little, and all out attack at every corner seems to be the only option. The last corner is very hard to follow close enough through to actually make a pass into turn one, despite it being one of the best passing zones on the track, and the amount I had to change my driving style to be competitive there was always tough on me. Then in the US, so far I have only raced at Mid Ohio once, but I have tested there twice. Me and that place just have not found a way of getting on together yet! That’s something I intend to try and put right the very next time I go there, but in terms of driving it, the track feels fairly alien to me, and it’s really somewhere I will have to work on getting better at if I get the opportunity to race there again!
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Q: Favorite driver?
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Gilles Villeneuve. He actually died before I was born, but once I started driving myself, I started going back through the history in Europe and watching old videos of Formula One races. What he could do with a car was just magic. That being said, before I started driving, I actually grew up in the era of Nigel Mansell driving the red #5. I was ecstatic when he finally won the F1 drivers’ world championship. He was courageous in the face of adversity, he was determined, and he never stopped fighting and never gave up. Those are still qualities that I admire today.
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Q: What are your thoughts on the 2012 season?
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Well unfortunately right now, despite best efforts otherwise, I am still an outsider looking in at this years’ Indycar season, so my opinions are strictly those formed as a spectator. However, that being said, I think it’s been a pretty great season to watch as a spectator so far. There has been passing at all of the tracks, we had a great race at Indy, the new aero rules seemed to have split up the pack racing on the big tracks and put more emphasis on a good mechanical set-up, then after that back into the drivers’ hands… As an outsider looking in, there seems to be a lot that’s being done right! Honda and Chevy are also obviously fairly equal, and Lotus is being allowed a mid season catch-up as per the rules. To be honest when you have to sit and watch a year like this, it only makes you hungrier and more determined to try to find a way to get back out there on track and join in again! Trust me – I’m working on it!!
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Q: What is your view on the CART/IRL Split?
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You know, I understand that everything happens for a reason, but I love the fact that right now Indycar racing IS unified again. I know that some of the fans from both of the old series feel that the new Indycar is a little too much like one itteration of American Open Wheel racing or the other, but it seems that slowly but surely more people are starting to realise what we have again this year. It’s a competitive year with different drivers winning, we have different engine manufacturers, the racing is close, and Indycar is working hard to try and maintain us as the most diverse group of drivers in the world by continuing to try and include oval races even when the financials don’t always make it easy to do so. I think the big thing for all of us right now is to really get behind our sport, and to keep pushing it forwards, and to help it grow. While it’s important to learn from mistakes of the past, it’s also important to remember that the future is in front of us, not behind us, and if we all keep working together to try and make our sport a bigger, better, stronger sport, I believe the future is bright for Indycar.
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Q: What would be your dream schedule?
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Ooohhh! I like this, this is a good question!
Firstly I agree with the fans who would like to see a few more oval races. The rumour of Phoenix being interested in 2013 hasn’t gone away, and although I’ve never been there, I hear it’s an Iowa style track, so it should provide good racing for the fans. I’m glad Milwaukee is back next year, and Iowa always seems to be popular. I am glad the big pack racing has been broken up at Texas, and maybe with testing, this would allow us to visit some of the other big ovals such as MIchigan, or maybe even a return to Chicagoland or Kentucky with the new formula. Homestead was also a great track to drive on, and naturally broke up the pack due to how tough it is to drive in a race stint even before the new aero rules, however we would need to get people to come out from Miami and attend our events there. So in an ideal world, oval wise, I would like to see Homestead, Phoenix, Indy, Texas, Milwaukee, Iowa, either Chicagoland or Kentucky, maybe Michigan, and I would like to see Fontana be more than a one year deal. So that would be eight oval races, and several different types of track.
Then street and road courses. St Pete, Barber, Long Beach, Toronto, Edmonton, Sonoma are all great tracks. I know the fans love Mid Ohio, so I guess that gets included despite the fact this is my dream schedule. I haven’t raced at Detroit, nor Baltimore, but Detroit are making changes already to make their event better in 2013, and I hear Baltimore is a great event too. I would love to see Watkins Glen somehow back on the schedule. I know I’m pipe dreaming here, but I love that place – it’s another big track like Sonoma that reminds me of home. Also I hear that all of the drivers love Road America. Somewhere I have never been, but again, it sounds like somewhere that’s worthy of being on our schedule if we can make it happen. Even if it doesn’t happen this year, maybe in the future there would be a way to team up with ALMS there and make that another stop on our calendar. I also think that would even out the road/street course balance a little too.
I think the race in Brazil each years seems to be incredibly popular with the fans and drivers, plus as someone who hasn’t traveled there, I like the fact that it’s on a very similar time zone to the US, so I think that works for the fans back here in the US watching. My personal opinion is that as an American based series I would like to see Indycar continue to focus mainly on America, Canada and Brazil for now, and to continue to grow it’s fan base here in the US. However as a Brit girl, and with this many Brits in Indycar, I do like to entertain the idea in my head, that maybe one day the series will visit the UK. The five hour time difference means as long as we race there in the middle of summer a 3pm local start time is a 10am ET start time. Still 7am and very early for the West Coast, but maybe, just maybe, not beyond the realms of possibility in the future. You never know!
We would like to thank Pippa, for sitting down with us. You can follow Pippa on twitter @pippamann and us @indycarallacces
