AJ Foyt Racing (AJFR) has always had a challenge in being able to field a team
that would be able to match the competitive output of teams that traditionally
are better financed, had more driving talent fielded to draw from for set-up
information in their paddock, as well as many other factors that enter into
placing a multi-car team to gain wins during the course of a traditional 16-20
race season.
This year, with this announcement of adding the No. 11 Chevrolet Dallara
driven by rookie Colombian driver Tatiana Calderón, who had very little recent
oval racing challenges in her apprentice experiences, and the signing of 2021
Indy Lights Series Champion, Andretti Autosport driver American Kyle Kirkwood
- driving the No. 14 Chevrolet Dallara, combined with sophomore full-season
AJFR driver Canadian Dalton Kellett - driving the No. 4 Chevrolet
Dallara, it became clear that, as a team, this presented an opportunity to
bring in a driver that could add both paddock experience and oval expertise to
the team mix.
Enter an American driver who was the 2009 Indy Lights Series Champion, has 66
career IndyCar starts, including 11 straight starts in the Indianapolis 500,
with a near win of the INDY 500 in his first year, J. R. Hildebrand.
In the 2022 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season opener held at St. Petersburg, it was
noticed that past AJFR driver, four-time INDYCAR SERIES champion, Frenchman
Sebastien Bourdais was helping the team, with its three drivers, from the
pitlane box. With the increase in car and driver counts in this post COVID-19
2022 season, it becomes an even greater necessity to have, in terms of
experience and driving talent, an "All Hands On Deck" paradigm in order to
exercise any advantage that can be gained. The American open-wheel series is
packed with the deepest talent pool found in any pinnacle professional
specification racing series in the world today.
What follows is a ZOOM Call press interview process with the newest addition,
and wrinkle, to the story that will become the 2022 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season
- Mr. J. R. Hildebrand.
J.R. Hildebrand - Friday, March 11, 2022
THE MODERATOR: Good morning, everyone. Announced earlier today, big news
from AJ Foyt Racing as J.R. Hildebrand returns to the team. It will be his
13th year of competition in the NTT INDYCAR Series as J.R. will compete on
the ovals driving the No. 11 Rokit Chevrolet for AJ Foyt Racing. Completing
the season for the No. 11 is, of course, Tatiana Calderon will compete on
the road and street courses for AJ Foyt Racing this year.
J.R.'s first race, no time like the present, comes up next Sunday in the
XPEL 375 at Texas Motor Speedway, first of five ovals which of course will
include the Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge. We counted up that.
That will be his 12th Indianapolis 500. We'll look forward to that.
J.R. joins us this morning.
J.R., congratulations, back in the seat, and an expanded role for AJ Foyt
Racing this year. How excited are you for this?
J.R. HILDEBRAND: Yeah, I'm excited to be back with this group. I think on
paper maybe our May last year didn't look super special, but I just really
enjoyed it. It was a great -- sometimes you're getting thrown into a new
team and you don't really know how things are going to go, and as an extra
car last year it felt sort of last minute. But really clicked with the guys
and appreciated the work and kind of just the process of working through
things. I felt like we as a group didn't feel like we rolled off the truck
great necessarily, and within a couple of days it worked into the window,
and I had the best race car, best feeling car I've had at the speedway in a
long time last year, just within a couple of days.
I think that particularly like at this point in my career, that really --
that matters a lot. Like that registers to you when you can make that type
of progress really quickly, and so I'm excited to be back with them and
doing more racing.
For me that's exciting to be doing more of the races on the schedule. I
really like the oval schedule that the series has right now. It's such a
mixed bag of different even like oval racing disciplines. Texas is totally
different, we don't go to any other mile-and-a-halfs now. It's a hard place.
Iowa, a place that I've had a lot of success at in the past and always
enjoyed, like that's been a track that for me I've just known what I needed
there from the race car from the first time I rolled up, and more often than
not have been able to find it with the teams.
Gateway, too, I think the awesome thing about INDYCAR racing generally right
now, but particularly the oval racing, is that there's nowhere that's easy
anymore. There's no flat-out, you're pinned for the entire race kind of
places. You've really got to drive, you've got to work with the team to get
the cars hooked up, and I'm looking forward to that challenge.
THE MODERATOR: This is your first expanded role in the series in several
years. Do you approach this differently? How do you approach this
differently than maybe just doing the one-off for the 500?
J.R. HILDEBRAND: Yeah, definitely. I guess a couple of things.
One for sure is that I've been preparing alongside, or remotely, I guess,
alongside all the full-time guys, same workout program and trainer as Josef
Newgarden and a handful of the other, Jack Harvey and a bunch of those guys.
With this potentially being what I was going to be doing this year for a few
months now, I definitely kind of turned the wick up in the off-season and
made sure just physically and mentally I'm going to be ready to go whenever
it happens. Whether it happens, whenever it happens, being totally prepared
for it from that perspective, which has been a nice kind of shift in the
off-season.
Last few off-seasons I've kind of known that it's just going to be the 500,
so you can -- not that I wouldn't be any less prepared for showing up at
Indy, but you just kind of -- your timetable is different. The kind of
amount of commitment from a scheduling perspective is totally different.
I've had my head in the game a little bit more, I feel like, over this
off-season just on the training side, and in terms of working with the team
even, it's just -- when you're going to do all the ovals or you're going to
do multiple races, there's a lot of differences in terms of how you show up
to run at Texas than you do on basically a two-day weekend, than you do to
run at the Speedway.
The things that matter are much more kind of specific. You don't have time
to run through a bunch of stuff. You're not developing a multi-day-long
program to figure out how to get the car sorted, to get comfortable, all
that kind of stuff. Even just pushing to get in the car to help shakedown
Kyle Kirkwood's car last week was part of that. If I can get like five laps
and do one in-and-out lap, that's really helpful showing up at Texas because
I'm not going to get 50 reps over the course of practice like you do at
Indy.
Just being a little bit more assertive, I think, in some of those
situations, knowing that there's a chance to be doing more racing, and I'm
feeling ready to rock and roll.
THE MODERATOR: Last season joining AJ Foyt Racing, I think you still
finished a team-high 15th at the 500. What did you learn about the program
that you can maybe build on for this five-race run here in 2022?
J.R. HILDEBRAND: Yeah, I think outside -- when you're kind of looking at the
teams maybe outside of the obvious like Penske, Ganassi, Andretti, ECR is
always fast at the speedway in particular, right, like you're kind of
uncertain about how do we kind of extract that level of performance, like
where is that going to come from, particularly at the Speedway.
I think kind of to an earlier point that I made, when I showed up there and
we got going, we didn't have time to prep as long as maybe those teams do.
The chassis that I was running last year was new in the shop in like April,
like it wasn't an off-season's worth of development to rub on it and get it
all nice and cozy.
I was really fortunate that over the course of my career I've kind of --
there's a handful of guys out and about that when my programs come together
they'll jump on board to run the car, so I felt like I had a really good
crew for sort of a one-off scenario that particularly in that instance came
together sort of late.
I guess what I'm really -- what you're looking for as a driver is just in
those kind of situations to feel like you could roll into race day with a
puncher's chance at it. The way we got through those handful of days, the
way that the whole engineering group worked together across four cars, it
felt like at multiple times throughout the day, we were just operating as
one -- as if there was just one car, as if it was all by committee.
There was no egos getting in the way on the driver or the engineering side,
and we just got down to business, and like I said, were able to figure a lot
of things out and get the cars to where it's like, man, if I'm -- if we can
manage to work the strategy and get up into the top 10, no doubt I'm going
to stay there, and I've probably got a shot at picking guys off even once
we're there.
The race for us last year didn't really turn out that way, but I think that
just gave me -- as soon as the race was over last year after going through
qualifying, I felt like we had really squeezed everything there was. Given
kind of where we were at and where the program was at, we did an awesome --
everybody did an awesome job executing there to be totally safe after our
first run, and then the same on race day.
As soon as Memorial Day weekend was up, I was already working on just
getting started out for this year because I felt like if we kind of get it
rolling in the right direction, this is a group that can achieve at a high
level. That definitely -- that's been my MO since last year, and I think
same with the team, and now finally we're able to announce it officially.
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A.J. Foyt shares an anecdote with J.R. Hildebrand last year in
the Foyt garage at Indy. Image Credit: AJFR (2021)
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Q. How beneficial is it to you going into Texas having been with the team in
St. Pete kind of from the start of the season so you've been working with
Kyle and Dalton and even Tatiana, as well, from the start of the year?
J.R. HILDEBRAND: Yeah, it's good. I think that it's an easy group just to
kind of slot into, and I've been at the shop since May last year. I talked
to the team manager, Scott Harner, and Kyle Kirkwood's engineer, Mike
Colliver, who was my engineer last year. He's sort of, I don't know, default
technical director for the team this year. He and I are on the phone every
couple weeks about all kinds of different stuff.
As much as it's not been as much in person interaction and maybe I've not
been in the car, my engineer Daniele, we've been chatting all the time. It's
an easy group to be in contact with, talk through things.
So I feel like we're sort of as prepared as we can be. There's no doubt that
it's a little bit of a -- it's just going to be a grind at times this year.
I mean, there's no question about that. Like I mentioned earlier, all the
oval tracks, none of them are easy anymore, so it's kind of like if you do
end up rolling off the truck and you're just not super competitive right
away, you don't have a lot of time to figure that out at anywhere other than
Indy, and now even at Indy you get a rain day or whatever before qualifying,
and suddenly your back is against the wall a little bit.
But like I said, I think what's encouraging to me and what's exciting about
doing this program this year with these guys is for where we're at, I think
everybody is prepared maybe for it to be kind of a grind, and along with
that, ready to do whatever we can to work together to dig our way up through
the field, through weekends.
I think we're sort of anticipating rolling off the truck and having a little
bit of work to do, and that's part of why we sign up to do this, why you do
it year in and year out, and I just really like the attitude that everybody
is bringing to it to dig our heels in and get with the program.
Q. From your own perspective, in terms of your confidence levels going into
the month of May and Indy, having done the race in Texas, is that going to
play into your hands in terms of like getting the car set up and stuff,
given that you'll have already been on a superspeedway?
J.R. HILDEBRAND: Yeah, it's hard to say how much the setups really translate
these days, and frankly having not been at Texas over the last couple years,
I don't really have a good feel for that. I feel like typically Indy is just
kind of its own thing, and now Texas is kind of its own thing.
But there will definitely be some insights that you glean just about how the
car interacts with different types of setup changes, and I think for me,
I've never felt like I had any trouble just getting with it at the speedway.
I've always been frankly kind of annoyed that I have to do refreshers and
stuff every year, but that being said, just doing a bunch of in and out laps
and having to do hot stops and working with the same core group of guys is
going to be a little bit of a different mixture of crew and personnel than
I've been used to working with.
Even if it's just -- we're not treating Texas like a warm-up for the 500,
we're treating Texas like a race that we're there to go compete at. But it
does function a little bit like that in a way that you get used to how each
other talks over the radio. You get used to that communication with the
strategist and the engineering group, and I think in some ways having to do
that in a little bit more of a quick-fire sort of environment where at Texas
you don't really have a lot of time, you've got to figure a lot of things
out while you're sitting on the pit lane in one-hour practice sessions, that
does accelerate that process a little bit before you show up at Indy.
Q. I wanted to ask you about working with Kyle basically because you were
obviously leading the team at the 500 in terms of that development you
were talking about, in terms of not quite rolling off the truck exactly as
you wanted but you were able to develop through the month of May. How much
are you kind of looking forward to giving that advice to Kyle and working
with him, as someone who's a bit more experienced, and seeing how he works
as a rookie coming through like you were once?
J.R. HILDEBRAND: Yeah, I mean, I think it was interesting actually being at
the Texas test, at his rookie test, whatever, last week. I got in, shook the
car down, and it was just kind of funny, I think my first -- it wasn't the
first time that I had driven an INDYCAR on an oval but my first test with
Panther Racing in 2011 season in my rookie season was at Texas, as well, and
just kind of thinking, like, yeah, I didn't really have anybody around to
let me know what was going on.
So it was kind of fun to have to sit there and think like what -- looking
back at it now, what do I sort of -- what was I ready to hear from somebody,
what was going to be like an overwhelming amount of information, trying to
kind of distill down what are those three or four things that would have
been nice to just have crystallized in my head, like yes, this is definitely
something you should start doing and then kind of evolve on your own and get
a feel for it. No, you should not tolerate the car being like this no matter
what anybody says, those types of things.
It was kind of fun to work through that process a little bit with Kyle. He's
obviously really good. There's no question about that. Once he got
comfortable and got a feel for things, he was out there in traffic running
just like anybody else would be.
But he's also fresh, and I think that there's a part of that when you've got
somebody who's clearly a very good driver, who clearly has a good feel just
kind of innately for the car, that actually can be quite an asset within a
team, to just know that you're going to get a really clean, unbiased,
unadulterated, unfiltered perspective on what the car is doing, and I think
he'll be trustworthy right away. I don't expect we'll be on completely
different pages.
He's come up very much the same way that I did, so his background coming
into the INDYCAR Series is similar, albeit in a weird way -- he's done less
oval racing. He's done a little bit more of it maybe in the Junior, Junior
categories because I didn't do any of that in F2000 or whatever, but in Indy
Lights championship when I raced Indy Lights, it was more stacked with ovals
than it is now. We had run at Indy -- it was funny talking to him that they
haven't even done the Freedom 100.
Even showing up at the speedway, it'll be a little bit more of a new thing
for him than it maybe was for me at the time, but I'm looking forward to it.
I am kind of ready to put my faith and trust in him to be a functional and
valuable part of the process of figuring the car out and all of that stuff
right away, even if it's just by knowing that if the car can do whatever you
think it needs to do that he'll be able to do it or not, and that all by
itself a lot of times is as much information as you need when you're going
through the checklist.
But yeah, I'm definitely excited. Excited for him to be able to have the
opportunity that he's got.
THE MODERATOR: J.R., when you're young like that, you've got to have a
certain amount of maturity to be able to check your ego at the door, right,
in a situation like that?
J.R. HILDEBRAND: Yeah.
THE MODERATOR: Put yourself in his shoes or any young person's shoes; did
you have that kind of mentality? Could you do that when you were that young?
J.R. HILDEBRAND: I think so. I don't know, maybe I'm not the right person to
ask.
You know, when I was a rookie, there was obviously -- running the National
Guard car, that was sort of a big deal. I felt like it was, to be driving
that car. The team had obviously had a lot of success, particularly at these
types of tracks.
The team environment that I was working at, Dave Cripps was my engineer and
we had a lot of really good people, and they were good at I think kind of
reducing the pressure to a degree, keeping the mood kind of light, but that
year outside of Indy where I had Buddy Rice as a teammate, I just didn't
have a -- looking back, I didn't think about this a lot of the time. Like at
the time I just thought, well, I'm here to go race and I'm the Indy Lights
champ and I'm good, I'm going to go out and do this and I'll figure it out
or whatever.
You know, you do -- in hindsight you do realize the value of having some
veterans around who are willing to share a little bit of just kind of their
perspective on stuff, and then as a young drivers you've got to just be able
to kind of filter that for yourself, like all right, I'm going to also go
out and just feel the car for myself and figure out what I think I need, and
if some of that -- if that matches up right away, then right, then that's
something that I can just log in the back of my mind, that this is -- I've
kind of been told this is what you should be expecting and whatever, and now
I can attach my own feeling to that, so that's something that I can kind of
skip over having to figure out on my own now.
I think there's definitely some advice I got early in my career as I started
to do more 500s and more races, I kind of realized maybe that wasn't --
maybe I shouldn't be quite so attached to that.
I think Kyle is in a place right now where he just seems to have like that
natural knack for knowing what he's looking for and knowing what he's got
when he's got it.
So I guess my feeling with him is, whether it's Sebastien at St. Pete
working with him, Seb can be a little long-winded and full of information,
which is awesome, but sometimes maybe a little bit hard to figure out how
much of this do I need to know right now, how much do I just need to focus
on what I'm doing. I'm probably a little bit the same way.
But I think Kyle is more than capable of kind of working through that. I'm
hopeful that I can be helpful to him over the course of this year and
particularly these first couple of races to help him feel comfy getting up
to speed.
Q. I wanted to ask a bit more about Iowa and how much testing or how much
iRacing you get to do on places that obviously you don't get anything like
as much practice time as you will do at Indy. Is there anything you can do
to prepare for somewhere as unique as Iowa Speedway or Gateway? Will you
be testing there?
J.R. HILDEBRAND: I think we've got a test day schedule for one of the two
later on. I want to say we're planning on testing Iowa off the top of my
head, but those things can always change.
Yeah, I guess fortunately those are both places like I've had good cars and
know what that feels like, so I think that that -- for me at least, like my
confidence level showing up at those places, I kind of feel like I already
have a good sense of the team's perspective on setups and all that kind of
stuff. I don't expect to be like way outside the window at those places when
we get there later in the year.
Then on top of that, Iowa is a place in particular that I've gone through
that process a couple of times with totally different versions of the
INDYCAR. Even my rookie year with the old car. We were not awesome rolling
off the truck, and at that point it wasn't because I really knew what I was
looking for, it was just I had kind of a hunch that I wanted the car to do
something a little different, and Crippsy was awesome about just, boom, a
couple of changes all at once, threw a different package out on the track
and the thing ripped.
When you have those experiences, especially like early in your career where
you go from being a little uncertain to then really feeling like, oh, man,
okay, this thing is on rails now, that's really sticky in your mind, like
okay, yeah, that was how that all changed, at first it felt like this and
then it felt like that and we hauled ass.
I'm sort of cautiously optimistic with those events later in the year. I
like the short track racing, short ovals. Those are both places that are
very driver and engineering dependent. It doesn't really matter how much
development you've done or how much prep goes into the car at those kinds of
tracks. The handling of the car and being aligned with that in terms of what
you're doing in the seat are the things that matter the most.
But to your point, I mean, same is true for everybody else, and there's a
lot of teams and drivers that have been competitive at those tracks over the
years. We've got to throw everything at it we can, and as a driver, you're
kind of looking for all the ways that are possible.
If we can get in the simulator, if we can get -- like you said, even just
doing some iRacing just to kind of be maybe that little bit more ready to go
and having a couple little things, all right, the way that you bend into the
corner, some of that kind of stuff, just refreshed for when you show up,
it's definitely pulling out all the stops.
Q. Does it feel strange for you to have done -- you're like a seasoned
veteran now. You've done this for -- well, you made your debut in 2010,
right? You got fastest lap on your debut, which is kind of cool. But
obviously you've already done 65 races, so you're a seasoned veteran but
you haven't gone the same experience as someone that's been solidly in the
series for all that time. Does it feel weird to have young guys kind of
tap you looking for experience and the sage old man advice?
J.R. HILDEBRAND: Yeah, I'm going to have to shave and start getting a little
bit of like a younger look going here soon.
You know, yes and no. I mean, I guess I feel like I've learned -- even when
I've been out of the car, I feel like I've learned a lot about -- and that's
just -- it's interesting to me, right. Like it's always something, even from
the outside, I've always taken an interest kind of in the engineering side
of things, so you're always just kind of wondering about and curious about
it, what are guys doing and how does Dixon manage to do that, or how does
Will Power just suddenly go to the top of the sheets. Like some of those
things, even when it's watching on TV or whatever, but certainly when you're
at the track -- I worked with AJ Foyt Racing last year a little bit kind of
in a driver-coach capacity.
I've just always found what's going on on track interesting, and part of
that's for me to kind of figure out, okay, if I get this opportunity, if I'm
jumping back in the car, how do I manage to evolve my thinking even though
I've not just been doing the reps.
You know, I think particularly when it comes to oval racing, it makes you
kind of -- I've done the same number of Indy 500s at least over my career as
anybody else has because I've done them all consecutively since my rookie
year.
You know, frankly, it's sort of a little bit flattering when you have guys
that are coming up -- even though I know that my results have not all been
stellar there, and I know that that's for all kinds of different reasons,
but when either as team personnel or when I put my 500 deals together, I get
like a whole bunch of really good guys that want to come and work on that
program, that were planning on just hanging out on the sidelines otherwise.
Like they don't need to work; they don't need to do it.
Those kinds of things, the team having the confidence in you to plug you in
to just random short situations, and then even working with guys like Kyle,
who kind of right away just assume that I know what I'm talking about and am
ready to provide some good advice. You know, at this point in my career,
I'll take that. I'm happy to do that and happy to be on my side of things
like honest about what I feel that I really strongly do have a valuable
opinion about and what maybe I don't and what guys should just go kind of
figure out on their own.
THE MODERATOR: You know you've been around a while when the younger guys
come up to you and say, hey, I remember watching you as a kid.
J.R. HILDEBRAND: Yeah, right? I know. It's like I see the dates, like the
years that a lot of these guys were born, and it's just like, man, I am
getting old; what the hell?
Q. Obviously the continuity is important, but you talked about being part of
this program kind of there or thereabouts since May. Kirkwood talked a
little bit to me a few weeks ago about how he's seen a lot of positivity
over the off-season. I'm kind of curious when you look at this program at
AJ Foyt, what kind of changes have you seen since you've been there that
really seem to make it feel like this program has elevated itself for this
season?
J.R. HILDEBRAND: I mean, I guess to me, the thing that I like about the
squad is just there's kind of like a grittiness to the attitude that the
team has, that it's not -- there's not like an expectation internally for
this year that we are going to be operating in every way like Penske or
Ganassi or something.
I think that there's like a bit of an honesty about, all right, we've got to
kind of like make up for the fact that maybe we don't have those kinds of
budgets and are not able to tap into these kinds of resources. We're not
doing a ton of days in the wind tunnel and all that kind of stuff. But the
team has done an awesome job even with a little bit of certainty in terms of
how things are going to end up working out for the year, without having
quite the same access or whatever, without having the same in-house
resources as some of the bigger teams, they've done a really awesome job at
just figuring out ways to account for that basically and figuring out -- I
don't want to say it's like scrappy, but it's just I'd say intelligent ways
of accounting for some of those differences, and just having sort of a
head-down mentality about working through stuff and being able to do that
development in their own way and showing up and being ready to rock and
roll.
Kyle has been super impressed with the car on road and street circuits so
far through the testing, and I think that's a testament not only to his
ability to be able to just get in and get there, but at some point the car
-- when you're racing against Scott Dixon and Alex Palou and Josef Newgarden
and Rossi and Herta and whatever, you've got to -- the car has to be there,
also, to be able to compete with those guys on those teams.
Kyle I think still knows that he's got room to grow and improve and get
better just as a driver. He's got some headroom still from that perspective.
I think that to me just points to the fact that a lot of the things that the
team is doing, the way that they have started to find ways of developing the
car through the off-season are working and that they've got like a really
high degree of efficiency from that perspective, and like I said, I think
one of the things that really stood out to me about this group is just the
overall attitude kind of from the top down about what we're here to do. Like
this is a team that I think understands kind of where we're at and has --
their expectations are not like out of control from that perspective, but
we're here to show up and win.
I think like at the 500 last year, we just got to work. Like there wasn't
anything that -- there was no screwing around. There was no, like, being
downtrodden about where we were at. It was like, this is just a process, and
if we keep executing together and we keep talking and we keep doing the
things you know you have to do as a group to get competitive, whether you're
at the top of the sheets or the bottom or whatever, we just went out and did
it. There was in a weird way like an ease to it like I've not experienced at
every team that I've been to, certainly kind of like jumping into a new
group of people.
I think that's some of what Kyle has experienced, and it feels like a team
that's on its way up. They're getting things figured out in a way that are
going to scale over the course of the year, over the course of the next
couple of years, and that's a fun thing to be a part of.
Q. You've run a couple of fun throwback liveries at the Indy 500 the last
few years. I look at that Rokit all-black at Texas last week, and it
brings me back to some Foyt liveries from yesteryear. Do you have
something planned for this month of May?
J.R. HILDEBRAND: I don't know. I've been lucky that I don't always have a
lot to do with the liveries, and somehow I just end up, like last year was
sort of an awesome surprise to be in that car.
So I don't know what the plan is for Indy this year. Yeah, there's
definitely some of the old Copenhagen black-and-orange cars and that kind of
stuff. I think we'll have ABC back on board it sounds like this year in a
pretty big way, so we'll see what the team has up their sleeve.
THE MODERATOR: It's one thing to have those liveries but it's another thing
to appreciate it. You're a student of the game so you can appreciate it.
That's important.
Q. You've mentioned "team" quite a lot. This is the first time, Dave
mentioned earlier, since 2017 you've kind of got a team for a season. I
know you're not full-time but this car is full-time. How does it feel to
be part of the team aspect again, knowing when you leave Indy that you
still have more races coming, this car is going to be on track every race.
Is it feeling different being part of the team persona again per se?
J.R. HILDEBRAND: Yeah, it's good. I like having teammates. I didn't for a
long time. I mean, I've had -- I've kind of been in these -- when I was
doing the one-offs with ECR for a couple of years, it was Josef and Ed and
myself, it was three of us, but for the most part the max I've ever had
around was one other driver, and for a lot of my career I've just been kind
of flying solo, or at least the beginning of my career that's definitely how
it was.
So I think on the driver side even it's awesome to have some different
people, working with different engineers. You do for sure get a lot more
information flowing. You get a lot more different thoughts, and as long as
that's not confusing to everybody, which the way that drivers are sometimes
it can be, I guess, but it's just a good vibe.
I think that with this particular group, not only the guys on the car but
the guys in the engineering staff, it's a lot of people that -- it's one
benefit, I guess, to have been around for a while. There's a lot of people
that I've worked with at some point in my career already, so there's a lot
of benefits to that, and definitely something I'm looking forward to.
Q. It seems like ovals seem to benefit veterans. What have you learned now
in 12 years of doing this? Last year as an example the Fast Nine had five
of the nine drivers in their 40s and you've got 46-year-old Helio winning.
Do you feel there's an advantage that as the series gets younger but the
veterans still stand on ovals? Is there any kind of an advantage over
these younger guys on these ovals this year?
J.R. HILDEBRAND: You know, I think it's just for the oval racing, there's
definitely a degree of just understanding the patience required, and there
are a lot of little things that you manage to do over time that in my
opinion just having a lot of reps in a lot of different -- slightly
different situations, you do kind of build up just that bank of knowledge
that matters a lot. It's why you see guys like Helio and Scott and Tony.
They're always kind of there.
Even if they're not there on race day, they're contributing a lot to their
team and their programs to make sure that they're kind of heading the right
direction.
I think that there's no question that experience matters, I guess, and so
from that perspective, just the more you've clicked off -- I've been
fortunate, there's only been -- I think I've only been in one 500 that I
didn't complete all the laps, so that's a lot of miles that are all --
there's a little learning experience in every one of them.
BEGIN
Q. It's kind of been touched on in this Zoom call a couple of times but not
in just this way. You've had an interesting arc in your career and you
show up each year with another, say, modified version of the INDYCAR
chassis and aerodynamics and so on. You're entering into a year now with
multiple races. What gives you the confidence about this year over, say,
some of the previous year's experiences with this chassis?
J.R. HILDEBRAND:
Yeah, I think that one of the things to me is this year -- I'd say since
2018 with the universal kit and then with the aeroscreen in 2020, that the
cars have just gotten, and not in a bad way, the cars have just gotten
harder to drive. They've got less downforce. The tracks have lost grip
over time and haven't had repaves, any of the ovals that we're going to in
particular.
I think that alone just kind of makes me feel like, all right, like I'm
definitely confident in my own sort of ability to show up at these places
and both understand pretty quickly, and now that I've raced a bunch of
different versions of this car, kind of like you said, have a pretty good
feel for what I think we can extract out of it and what we can actually
get it to do from a setup perspective.
Then once if we can get it in that window, to go kind of maximize what I
can get out of it as a driver. I feel like one of the things that I've
kind of prided myself on road courses, street courses, oval racing,
whatever, is just when it comes down to it, being willing to commit at
that sort of maximum level. If there's a corner that we think is possible
to do flat-out, like I will definitely be the guy that at least gives it a
try.
That's sort of served me well, I guess, over my career and definitely
matters at this point because there's a lot more oval corners that are
more on that borderline than there used to be, and so I'm looking forward
to it.
I'm ready for the sort of challenge of it and am excited about that, and I
think with this group, I have confidence that we can figure it out.
Q. Being part of a group and then the arc of your experience and then
knowing the different chassis, like you said, when to go for it in those
questionable corners, it's that kind of advice that can really lend to the
experience to the whole team. Is that what you see as your role, as
well?
J.R. HILDEBRAND: Yeah, I mean, I guess I feel like I'm here to help steer the direction of
-- almost a little bit like being an extra engineer or something in those
discussions at least, just kind of trying to -- if it's relevant or it's
necessary, trying to kind of help bridge the gap between what are we all
feeling with the car and what's really possible to get out of it, and so
trying to kind of filter that information a little bit, because that is
something that I feel like I walk into these places with a pretty good
feel for, like what are we going to have to tolerate in terms of the car
not being perfect, like what's just a car thing, like we're not going to
get over that hump, so we need to focus our energy somewhere else versus,
okay, this is actually a problem that we need to deal with like right now
and we need to fix it.
I think that's a little bit of just the experience that I've had on a lot
of different oval tracks in a lot of different scenarios, like you said,
with different chassis, with different kind of configurations over the
years, being able to help add some context to that discussion.
Then ultimately if I'm the one that's going to have to go out and do all
the qualification simulation work or whatever to figure that out, I'm
certainly not disappointed or scared of being in that situation.
I think at the end of the day, it's probably -- I guess from the team's
perspective it's probably nice to have somebody who's willing to go off
and do that, and if that ends up being me, that's totally fine. I'll take
that on.
ENDS
Q. Now that you have these races set up on the ovals, where is the mindset
at right now because there's some drivers that get those part-time
opportunities hoping they turn into a full-time deal in the future. Where
is your mindset on that? Are you more or less focused on what's ahead or
hoping that what's ahead can lead to more greater things in the long
haul?
J.R. HILDEBRAND: That's a good question. For sure right now my head is just
totally strictly focused on showing up to Texas and being as ready for that
as we can be and going out and performing. For me that's certainly on behalf
of the team, to take it to -- to be able to take advantage of this
opportunity and them choosing me to be the guy for this role.
Honestly, like it's as much just for myself to go out there and continue to
work on my craft. You have to kind of go out with the intention to execute
in every little facet of what you do, whether it's in-and-out laps in
practice, I mean, every little thing.
I think for me it's one of the things that I've learned over the course of
my career, that you can kind of attach yourself a little bit too much to
results or even just like goals from a performance perspective, and at the
end of the day what really keeps you going and keeps you wanting to do this,
and for me it's been -- I've had like a revived feeling of that energy over
the last few years because I've been able to change my mindset a little bit,
is just as a driver you do really know when you just get everything out of
it, even in those little small micro experiences over the course of a
weekend, and then you start to know if I just start stacking these little
things up, kind of regardless of where I end up finishing because sometimes
there's aspects of that that are not in your control, whether because
strategy doesn't work or we didn't have the car that you needed to do this
or that or whatever, that you can still come out the other side of those
weekends feeling like you accomplished something, and then kind of know you
have a more fundamental sense of where you can get better.
That's what I'm after in this is can we go to Texas, learn something, come
out the other side of it feeling like we're better for it, better for having
been there that weekend, and hopefully feeling as a group that we executed
when we had the chance when it mattered. Wherever we end up is where we end
up, and at the end of the season however that manifests itself in terms of
doing more or not or whatever, that to me is like a totally secondary
concern.
Q. Going back to the time in 2012, it was the first time you drove a Chevy
engine car. It was the year with your best results and at Texas was the
fifth position, and it was the year when you got the best finish overall
in the standings at the 11th position. 10 years later, quite an
anniversary, this time I know it's different circumstances. Now that
you've got the opportunity again, have you thought about the chance of
running another remarkable season again like in 2012?
J.R. HILDEBRAND: I guess I haven't really thought about it in quite that
context. I think about that race at Texas a lot, though, because that was
like one of those Texas races where five or six cars finished on the lead
lap, I think. Like it was super hard.
We were desperately trying to make sure that it wasn't going to be a pack
race, and it turned into a thousand percent the opposite of a pack race.
I remember being crossed up and sideways coming off of Turn 4 a bunch of
laps in a row and thinking that surely we were just going to be awful in
that event and then kind of discovering that we were going to run in the top
5 at the end of it.
I think in some ways that's probably one of the more similar experiences
just in terms of like, okay, this is going to be a long race that you've got
to just be there at the end. There's going to be points where you've got to
just kind of buckle down and be ready for everything to feel terrible, and
your tolerance for that is going to be a big part of what decides where you
end up at the end of the race.
I mean, I guess I come into every -- I try to learn a little bit from
everything that I do, right, and watching a lot of what other guys are
doing. I've been watching the races from Texas last year just kind of trying
to pick out some of those little things, like Pato made his way to the
front, Graham Rahal was really good, what do their cars look like, what can
they do that the other cars can't do, trying to reverse engineer a little
bit of how do I get there, also, so that I can do those things.
You know, I guess I think that this is in a more general sense, this is for
a lot of reasons a good opportunity just to work with a good group of guys,
and hopefully, yeah, like you said, hopefully have another one of those
years where things just kind of click at the right times and at the right
places, and then I can go out and do my job.
Like I feel way more confident in my ability to go out and get the most out
of my part of things now than I probably ever did when I was younger. When I
was younger it was a lot more -- there was a lot more uncertainty in terms
of what that even means at certain places. You're showing up to these tracks
in that type of scenario with a car that's like that with the regs being
that way. You don't know what to expect, you're just kind of out there
figuring it out on the fly.
You know, I feel very prepared and just ready to go.
Q. I saw when you were talking about the five ovals, I wasn't sure exactly
whether this was a full-year commitment for you with Foyt that would have
you at the other races as like an advisor, test driver, whatever you want
to say, so could you clarify that perhaps?
J.R. HILDEBRAND: You mean for the road course races? Like to be around -- so
I'll be driving all the ovals, and then yeah, it's a discussion that we've
had about being around for a little bit more of what's going on.
The team actually has like a really great group of kind of former drivers
and people that have been around, so I guess I would say I think that's
something that the team is, I think, having a lot of discussion around, just
the value of having other drivers that have like a reasonable opinion, I
guess, about what's happening.
But no solid commitments on my end for that one way or the other.
Q. When the car switches to the oval, obviously it's either a different car
or a totally different setup. Does the team switch? Is there staffing
changes?
J.R. HILDEBRAND: No.
Q. Everybody stays with that car?
J.R. HILDEBRAND: Yeah, yeah, everybody will just cross over.
Q. I noticed the world "old" came up. I'm not exactly the youngest guy on
the planet myself. You're the seasoned journeyman. That to me sounds a lot
sweeter.
J.R. HILDEBRAND: I'll take that.
Q. Keep in mind that the guy that won the Indy 500 last year was 12 years
your senior.
J.R. HILDEBRAND: As long as Helio and Scott and Tony are still doing it, I'm
not feeling old at all compared to those guys.
Q. You talked a lot about the team and about how do you grow up in all this
time. One thing I have in mind is as you think about a mentor driver, is
it a change in your mind to decide going out to race the car and now to
try to build up the development of your teammates that you are trying to
help?
J.R. HILDEBRAND: Yeah, it's a little bit different, but it's -- I guess it's
something that I really welcome. It's I think kind of a healthy attitude to
have within a team, just to be working alongside and a little bit even on
behalf of the rest of the squad.
I think when you're younger earlier in your career, when you've got
teammates you feel like it's very competitive against your teammates, and in
certain circumstances that's also healthy and warranted and that kind of
elevates the competition level of the team.
I think particularly when it comes to oval racing, though, there's so much
-- like for me you're just running your own race, and so there's a lot of
value in being able to be object the same page with the rest of your
teammates, to create that sort of evolution of the car over the course of
the weekend and be as on the same page and open and honest and transparent
about where you're at and where you think it needs to go relative to what
everybody else does because there's, at least in my experience, there's a
little bit more of a direct correlation between making the car better for
one person and making the car better for everybody.
I think particularly with Kyle, he and I thus far have seen sort of eye to
eye, and he seems -- he's very confident but not arrogant at all. I'm just
looking forward to working with him. I haven't had that many opportunities
to work with teammates, like I've said before, over the course of my career,
and certainly not in a capacity like this. It's just something that I think
I'm looking forward to, and I think we'll -- I see the benefit for all of us
if we can manage to get on the same page like that.
Q. Just a silly question: I want to know if in your podcast there will be a
chance for Marcus to raid your race this time.
J.R. HILDEBRAND: Yeah, I'll have to have him fill in for my rating over the
course of the year. I think that would be fair.
Q. After a few years of not racing at all of these tracks, which oval are
you most looking forward to?
J.R. HILDEBRAND: That's a great question. I think Iowa. Iowa is a place that
-- I'm looking forward to all of them, but Iowa is definitely a place,
especially since it's a double-header, that I feel like we've got a really
good chance of showing up there, even if it's just over the course of a
couple of days. By the time we get to the second race, having things pretty
figured out. It's a track that I've liked in the past. It's really fast for
a short oval. Hopefully we get a couple of different lanes working so that
the racing is kind of particularly fun there when that ends up being the
case.
Yeah, just a fun place to go racing.
Q. Are you planning on driving your car Rosy, whatever you call it, to the
500 again?
J.R. HILDEBRAND: I'm not sure. It'll depend a little bit on the weather this
year. That was quite the haul last year. But I'll definitely drive something
out to Indy from here in Colorado, so we'll have to wait and see.
THE MODERATOR: J.R., pace yourself. We've got a ways to go before we get to
Iowa.
We'll wrap things up here. Congratulations, J.R. We'll see you in Texas next
week.
J.R. HILDEBRAND: Thank you.
[ht: FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports]
... notes from
The EDJE FEATURED ARTICLE>>>
TAGS:A.J, Foyt Racing, Chevrolet, J.R. Hildebrand, No. 11 ROKIT, No. 14
ROKIT, No. 4 K-LINE, ovals, TMS, IMS, Iowa Speedway, World Wide
Technology Raceway, The EDJE
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