JWR ALUM: IndyCar Notes: NBCSN reporter encourages motorsports careers with ‘Fuel the Female’ …5/18/2018 By INDYCAR | Published: May 16, 2018 Katie Hargitt woke up one morning earlier this year and realized there was no time like the present.
Hargitt has been in motorsports for 18 years, first as a short-track open-wheel driver and now as an NBCSN reporter on Verizon IndyCar Series telecasts, She often wondered how she could help to find a path for more young women to work in the world of racing, especially in the engineering, mechanical and business side of the sport. “A few months ago, I woke up, and I thought: ‘This is the year of the woman. We can’t miss this opportunity to bring out young women, empower young women to achieve their dreams and show them all the successful women in the Verizon IndyCar Series paddock.’” “Fuel the Female” was born. The new group aims to empower young women to pursue careers in motorsports and other science, technology, engineering and math (STEM)-related industries. Fuel the Female’s inaugural event took place Tuesday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, with 60 Indianapolis Public Schools female students visiting the track for the day and learning more about the exciting world of motorsports. A variety of women with prominent careers in motorsports spoke to the girls in the North Chalet and the Firestone Suite at the track, sharing their experiences and encouragement about a career in racing, including Indianapolis 500 driver Danica Patrick; Kate Gundlach, assistant engineer for Chip Ganassi Racing; Cara Adams, chief engineer for Firestone Racing; Jessica Mace, mechanic at Andretti Autosport; and Lisa Boggs, Bridgestone Americas director of motorsports. As the organization grows, Hargitt hopes Fuel the Female will serve as a door for an exciting new world for young women. “As a reporter, so many times I see young girls up against the fence, looking for someone that looks like them in pit lane,” Hargitt said. “And there’s only a few of them. So I hope that girls come out to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway or they come into a Fuel the Female program and it lights a fire in them and a passion in them for motorsports so that we can grow that few into an army.” Visit fuelthefemale.org to learn more about Fuel the Female, to join the foundation.
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At just 27 years of age, Kevin Lacroix seems much too young to be making a comeback in his auto racing career. But Lacroix, who got out of the driver’s seat in 2008 and didn’t return until last year to compete in a few NASCAR Pinty’s Series races, is doing just that and shows little rust in his immense abilities. “I tried to forget about racing all this time and it didn’t happen,” said Lacroix before taking part in Wednesday night’s Velocity Prairie Thunder 250 at the Wyant Group Raceway. Rookie sensation Cayden Lapcevich, just 16, barged to the lead halfway through the race and hung on to his first win after a late caution. LP Dumoulin came from outside the top 10 to finish a strong second and Alex Labbe was third. Lacroix finished eighth. Lacroix began racing at the age of eight and was involved in karting until he was 15 and earned a scholarship to the e BMW Racing School in Valencia, Spain, in 2004. From there, he finished second in the American Formula BMW Championship in 2005 with four wins in 14 races and went on to compete in the Star Mazda Series and Champ Car Atlantic Championship with John Walko Racing. “Then in my first full season in Atlantic cars in 2008, it was tough with the sponsorships,” he said of the economic depression that hit just about everywhere in the world. It was tough for everybody. So I stopped racing in 2008 and started working in the family company selling auto parts.” But last year, the family bought a car with a family friend and when he retired, Lacroix got back behind the wheel for six races in the series. Not only was Lacroix competitive right off the bat, but he won at ICAR and Trois-Rivieres to become the first rookie in series history to win two races. They had planned on just racing two or three times a year, “but when we won at ICAR the plans got bigger. Now here I am with sponsors and a good team and here all season,” Lacroix said. “It’s pretty nice to be back in racing, that’s for sure.” Lacroix has yet to win this year, but is fifth in the driver’s standings with 211 points, just 38 points behind leader Andrew Ranger going into Wednesday’s race. “I didn’t lose my speed with all these years being away from the race track, but the experience of racing and the action and traffic I have lost it a little bit,” said Lacroix, who grabbed his first pole position in Edmonton on the weekend. “With the wins last year the expectations are maybe high and it gives us some pressure. But the goal this year is to learn and be strong in the next few years.”
He said the hardest part about coming back is “trying to be as good as you were before. I didn’t lose speed, but I lost concentration capabilities or managing the races and the traffic and being calm. I have to gain that back and it takes a lot of time. “People think that if you are fast you are going to win, but it is not only that — you have to work on the car, work with other drivers, be respected and respect other drivers.” He’s looking forward to racing for the first time in Saskatoon. “The track is nice and wide, not as tight as Edmonton, so I think drivers will respect each other more. So far it is one of the nicest (tracks) I have seen in Canada. It can offer good side-by-side racing.” Lacroix was tempering his expectations, admitting he is still more comfortable on road courses than racing on ovals. “Normally the goal as a driver is to win — that’s my goal on road courses — but on ovals I’ll be really happy to be on the podium.” Chris “The Wolf” Winkler got his first taste for the track at the Jim Russell Racing Drivers School in Mont-Tremblant more than 20 years ago. Over the course of his semi-pro career, Winkler has done everything from claim an SCCA championship to going wheel-to-wheel racing on quarter-mile tracks. If it’s got wheels, he’s raced it. Last year Dodge tapped him to drive the 2016 Dodge Viper ACR (American Club Racer) in a quest to attain the undisputed title as the world’s fastest street-legal car. Since then the 2016 Dodge Viper has claimed 13 single-lap track records, setting a new mark for number of records held by a production car, and Winkler has been behind the wheel for eleven of them. Winkler, who works for Dodge as an SRT® Vehicle Dynamics Engineer, not only knows how to wring every 100th of a second out of the 2016 Dodge Viper ACR, he also helped build it. Here we caught up with Winkler to talk about his accomplishments on the track and what sets the 2016 Dodge Viper ACR apart from its legendary predecessors. Here we caught up with Winkler to talk about his accomplishments on the track and what sets the 2016 Dodge Viper ACR apart from its legendary predecessors. Redline: What originally got you into racing? CHRIS WINKLER: I wanted to get involved in cars and racing out of college. I crewed on a friend’s open-wheel car and went on to Jim Russell Racing Drivers School outside of Montreal. They were the coolest at the time because they allowed passing. I did their annual graduate runoff and won. That gives you a free year of racing up at their school. I took rookie of the year. The next year I won their series and that gave me a free ticket to their international championships in England. I went over, got one day to learn the course, and came in second. It would have been interesting to come in first since winning got you a year in a manufacturer’s cup series, second place got you nothing! Which track did you enjoy taking the Viper ACR on the most? Any track with a lot of elevation change and blind corners is the most challenging. The flat tracks and the modern tracks have their quirks but there’s nothing like the thrill of traversing the elevation changes typical of older tracks. Road Atlanta is one of my favorites, even though they eliminated one of the most exciting turns in racing by adding an S-turn to slow cars down coming in under the bridge. What’s the most challenging corner out of the tracks you’ve driven? I didn’t drive Laguna Seca for this campaign but it has turns 5, 6, the Corkscrew, and then turns 9 and 10. They have elevation changes and camber changes that make you commit the car early on until you reach the exit. In these superfast turns like the ones at Laguna you’re crossing your fingers for a good portion of them and hoping for the best. What are a few things that set the 2016 Dodge Viper ACR apart from its predecessors? The tire contact patch on the road for starters. The Kumho® Ecsta V720 tires are the equivalent of any DOT race tire. Kumho® has stepped up every time for FCA. We gave them a shot at the ACR and they succeeded beyond our expectations. The tires have great drivability at the limit and fantastic grip. The rear tires are fantastic for power delivery. The suspension, the BILSTEIN® shocks are tuned for the ACR. And the Extreme Aero Package transforms the car. Aerodynamic grip, produced by downforce, is essentially free grip. There’s no penalty or compromise in another performance area. It just helps you all around and it works better at high speeds than low speeds (1, 101 lbs. of downforce at 150 mph and 1, 533 lbs. at 177 mph). It’s part of what makes the Viper ACR such a great car. Where would you like to set the next lap record? It would be nice to go the ‘Ring (Nürburgring). That’s the elephant in the room anytime we talk about this kind of thing. We couldn’t go earlier because they shut it down for lap record attempts. We’ve been waiting for them to improve the track. You can tweak everything from the suspension to the aero package on the 2016 Dodge Viper ACR. Was there much variance in your setups for each track?
We’re going to share the tweaks we had for each of the tracks and publish the setup sheets for each run. The differences are very minor off of the standard set up, a click or two of shock or a half-inch of ride height. It’s a sensitive machine. It’s a racecar for the road and appropriately it responds like one. What makes the ACR so unique even within the Viper range of cars? We were able to use spring rates (600 lbs./in. on the front, 1, 300 lbs./in. in the rear) we have never come close to before and that helps the aero platform. What do you consider the most significant track record to date for the 2016 Dodge Viper ACR? We blew away the lap record at Laguna Seca and did it with Randy Pobst. He’s one of the best drivers there. He can somehow master the track with any car. We beat a $1 million hypercar by 1.24 seconds. It’s a significant margin. Right now it’s hard to imagine a better track car based on a car you can drive on the street. Ohio-native Graham Rahal scored his second career race victory in the Verizon IndyCar series this past weekend at the MAVTV 500, at Auto Cub Speedway in Fontana California. Graham is the son of Bobby Rahal, an SCCA National Champion and Indy 500 winner, and currently drives for the team that bears his name.
Graham tasted Runoffs Gold in 2005 at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, after a dominating performance behind the wheel of his Anderson Walko Racing Formula Atlantic. The then 16-year-old driver still holds the record as the youngest Runoffs National Champion in SCCA history. In 2008, Graham scored his first win in the newly-merged Verizon IndyCar series at the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. Since that time Rahal has been a front-runner in the series, but was unable to finish in the top spot of the premier professional open-wheel series in the United States. The win pushes Graham to the fourth in the Championship. On behalf of each of us at SCCA, membership and staff alike, we congratulate Graham Rahal on his win out in California. Keep up the good work! This upcoming weekend I will be again embarking on an F2000 Championship Series adventure. Piloting the Bruce Work entered RFR chassis, we again will be bringing a host of updates to the chassis. Our previous event, at the historic Watkins Glen, was a tumultuous one.
I crashed the car in Friday practice after an apparent brake malfunction. After replacing two corners and fixing a host of other issues we managed to get back on track for Saturday’s qualifying session. A 24th starting position lead to a 16th place finish in race 1. Sunday saw further adjustment to the car and the rewards were reaped. I qualified 16th place and drove to 8th in race 2. I hope that these changes will result in a fast car, but we will have to wait and see. John Walko and I will be working diligently to improve the car all weekend, and I still hold the lap record at The Glen, so I hope for good things. During the downtime between the two events we have made more changes. The VIR weekend, unlike the one at Watkins Glen, will provide us with plenty of track time. Notably, two full practice days are included. This will be advantageous to us as we have seen less track time then the majority of the F2000 paddock as a result of our limited competition. This in mind, I hope that we can make some serious progress on the car. Moreover, due to a recent trip to VIR I have a good understanding of the VIR circuit. All things considered, I am very excited to go to VIR! This past weekend featured the F2000 Championship’s ultimate event for 2013. Tim Minor, wielding a Citation chassis, won the championship handily over his competitors. Congratulations to him! In fact, Tim did not even need to compete in the final event to win the championship. An impressive showing for sure. I however had no intentions of claiming the 2013 championship and only competed one previous event on the year. Going into this event, which was at the wonderful Summit Point circuit located in West Virginina, I as well as my team members were more than excited. We had just finished a ground up restoration on a Van Diemen and had high hopes that we could position this car inside the top five positions. Lessons about hope versus preparation can come at a high price though. Rain struck for most of Friday and left us with little track time. I did three laps in the morning to shake the car down and all went well. We sat out the rest of the day hoping for a dry qualifying session. Sure enough, the big ball of heat in the sky graced us and the track was drying just in time. We as well as most others opted to brave the drying track on dry tires. This was the correct option. Unfortunately, the car lost a water hose and cooked the engine at around the half way point of the session. We thought the engine survived and attempted Saturday’s race only to retire on the second or third lap. The Van Diemen was retired and the RFR chassis was called up for duty for Sunday. Starting position was based upon your fastest lap from Saturdays race. My best lap having been completed with an expiring engine was appropriately lackluster. I qualified 23rd for Sunday’s event. The start took two tries, the first of which resulted in a spectacular collision amongst two of my competitors and brought out the red flag. Check out the in-car from one my of track mates Nick Palacio. Skip ahead to the 45 second mark to get to the crux of the start. Everyone was okay, though a lengthy red flag period did take place.
As the race did not make it past the first time the start was declared a false. This warranted getting the field back into their original grid spots (minus the five cars lost) and completely redoing the start. After the second flying of the green flag the field made it through turn one. The race was on! I had significant pace on the cars in my immediate path, but knew that as I dug closer to the front of the field the competition would only get tougher. The strategy was simple, make passes quickly and efficiently but setup the pass in a manner that reduced my vulnerability in the following sections of track. In this way I would gain a position but not waste time racing the driver who I had gotten by. I made short work of a few guys and soon caught a large group. Getting through them could be touch and go, luckily they were racing. This resulted in their own loss of momentum and meant that if I timed passes correctly I could drive through the pack. By the half way mark I was in clean space and catching 5th place. He spun moving me into his position. I continued to push and was starting to put in my best times of the weekend. I was catching fourth place handily. At this time, third place made a mistake and found himself off the racing surface. This promoted me to fourth place. Unfortunately, I made one or two small errors and this hindered my ability to get to the third place position. Nevertheless, this was a solid performance for me in the Bruce Work entered Ralph Firman Racing (RFR) chassis. A 19 position improvement over the course of the race also handed me the CellMark Paper Hard Charger award. Overall, I feel we are doing good things with the RFR platform and hope that we will continue to make progress on it. Several development parts are in the works back at the John Walko Racing compound and if we can get some testing in we are sure to improve further. Special thanks goes out to Bruce Work for making the weekend possible, to John Walko for his dedicated pursuit of race car engineering, and finally my father Dave for being a kickass mechanic and awesome trackside chef. I hope to see you all in 2014! There were not any real plans to run any pro weekends outside of Mid-Ohio, luckily, that has changed.
This time around I’ll be piloting a Van Diemen that is under the Bruce Work entrant. We were hoping to get several new components on line for the the RFR chassis, but as those parts will not be complete we decided to go the other route. We’ve been slaving for the last week to finish up the Van Diemen, but we are nearly done. The car isn’t new, but it’s about as close as you can get without buying one from the factory. The car is all black, number 37, but is yet to be named. We’ll see how the weekend goes before christening the new ride with a name. I’ve yet to get any solid pictures of the new car, though a shoddy one is posted below, I assure you that she is rather nice looking. Additionally, I’ll attempt to get updates here as the weekend progresses. PITTSBURGH, PA - PRL Motorsports LLC announced the appointment of John Walko as Race Director and Lead Engineer. Walko’s career in the race industry spans over 20 years. He will oversee all of the company's race car engineering and will serve as the race director, reporting directly to Patrick R. Linn, Team Coordinator, Owner and Manager of PRL Motorsports LLC.
"John has an extensive background in operations and engineering in the race industry," said Linn. "Having run John Walko Racing and with considerable experience elsewhere in the race industry, his involvement as the race director and lead engineer will be a key ingredient to the success of our growth strategy. We are very pleased to add John to our team." Walko started driving in SCCA Club Formula Ford in 1994 and later opened his own prep shop. Since 1999, Walko has been a crew chief and engineer in SCCA Formula Ford, Formula Continental, Formula Ford Zetec Championship, Star Mazda, and the F2000 Championship Series as well as within a variety of vintage series in the east. In the highly competitive F2000 Championship Series, Walko has racked up several wins, and established a prowess for fine-tuning both machine and driver. Similarly, his involvement in vintage racing has produced widespread successes with multiple race wins. Operating out of the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area, PRL Motorsports, LLC has established a national reputation in the race arena as a high-performance motorsports company. PRL Motorsports has an in-house fabrication center and services include custom fabrication, dyno tuning, machine work, chassis tuning, engine management, race car prep, consultation, race car rentals, transportation services and parts sales. Its 2012 racing events includes the USF2000 Championship Series, SCCA National racing and the Pro Star Mazda racing series. For the 2013 season, Walko will be the Team Director and Lead Engineer, running the team's continued programs focusing on the “Mazda Road to Indy” with the USF2000 Series. Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen the great success of the Mazda Road to Indy ladder system created by Tony George, Jr. and Jason Penix. While much emphasis is placed on the graduation of drivers from one series to the next, they’re not the only ones picking up skills and looking to advance into the IZOD IndyCar Series. Drivers move up from karts or small formula cars such as the 1600cc Skip Barber machines into the USF2000 National Championship. From there, they step up to a higher-horsepower, more aerodynamic sensitive Star Mazda machine, and then into the 450hp, 190+ mph Firestone Indy Lights racers. A number of drivers have already demonstrated how successfully each of these series have prepared them for the next level of competition. We need only to look at former Star Mazda champion, and Indy Lights driver Conor Daly and his first win in the highly competitive GP3 series. The IZOD IndyCar Series is now replete with graduates from these junior formula series, with the notable standouts being James Hinchcliffe, and former Indy Lights champions JR Hildebrand and Josef Newgarden. Seldom given any airtime and recognition in the press, many of the mechanics and engineers in USF2000, Star Mazda, and Indy Lights are also seeking to move up the ladder and one day find themselves on the grid on Race Day morning as a participant in the Greatest Spectacle in Racing. For one young engineer, that dream will be realized this month as Star Mazda Quality Control Engineer Kate Gundlach, a mechanical engineer graduate from the University of Pittsburgh, will join forces with Simona de Silvestro at HVM Racing beginning with this year’s Indianapolis 500 Mile Race as the teams Data and Electronics Engineer. “I worked with HVM during the Long Beach Grand Prix weekend and was very pleased when they offered me the DAG position on Simona’s car. I was very impressed with Simona and the HVM team, with their level of professionalism and presentation. It’s a huge change, moving from working for a series to working for a team, but the professional – and personal – education I received while working for the Star Mazda Championship has prepared me to hit the ground running in IndyCar and be confident that I can contribute to Lotus HVM Racing’s success.” — Kate Gundlach, #78 Nuclear Clean Air Energy Lotus/Dallara HVM Racing Data and Electrical Engineer It’s fantastic to see the graduation of professionals of all kinds through the Mazda Road to Indy program. It benefits the teams at the higher levels by creating a pool of experienced and seasoned engineers and mechanics from which to recruit. It also benefits the teams at the lower levels by providing a clear and tangible avenue for career advancement beyond the initial job for which they were hired. Successful recruiting of the best talent means first having the ability to provide them with a dynamic career environment.
Ms. Gundlach’s example should be a ray of hope and a model for young aspiring race engineers. John Walko Racing Alum moving up the ladder! Official Star Mazda Press Release
Pacoima, CA / May 7, 2012 – Proving yet again that the Star Mazda Championship presented by Goodyear is one of the most effective and prolific motorsports development programs in racing today, the series is proud to announce that yet another graduate has made the big jump… directly from Star Mazda to IndyCar. It’s a different kind of graduate this time, however. Not a driver, but rather Star Mazda Quality Control Engineer Kate Gundlach, who will immediately join HMV Racing as the Data and Electronics Engineer (DAG) for Simona De Silvestro and the #78 Entergy Nuclear Clean Air Energy Lotus Dallara. This move creates a rare pairing of female driver and female engineer, both of whom achieved substantial success climbing the open-wheel ladder and are poised for success at the top level of the sport. “I worked with HVM during the Long Beach Grand Prix weekend and was very pleased when they offered me the DAG position on Simona’s car,” says Gundlach, who moved from Vancouver B.C. to Indianapolis to take the job. “I was very impressed with Simona and the HVM team, with their level of professionalism and presentation. It’s a huge change, moving from working for a series to working for a team, but the professional – and personal – education I received while working for the Star Mazda Championship has prepared me to hit the ground running in IndyCar and be confident that I can contribute to Lotus HVM Racing’s success.” Gundlach, during her almost three years with the Star Mazda Championship (2009 – 2012), was responsible for working with the teams and series management to produce a continuous mechanical and electronic (including data systems) upgrading of the Pro Formula Mazda race car; an evolution designed to improve safety, reliability and speed while maintaining the series’ focus on placing driver talent ahead of big budgets. “We’re very happy for Kate, but not surprised,” says Star Mazda founder and President Gary Rodrigues. “She’s a very accomplished engineer who has done great work for our series, so it’s inevitable that she, just like the drivers who compete in our series, is moving up the ladder. Star Mazda has always been a launching pad for drivers, crewmen, engineers and even teams moving up to the next level. That’s our main mission, and it’s always a pleasure to watch our graduates succeed. She will represent us well in IndyCar.” A native of Pittsburgh, PA, Gundlach was raised in a motorcycling family, finally transitioning to open-wheel racing via the Formula SAE program while working on her mechanical engineering degree at the University of Pittsburgh. A trip out to the Beaver Run Motorsports Complex for a race led to a meeting with principals of the Andersen/Walko Star Mazda team – and a job offer, starting immediately. “When I started there, I worked upstairs in the loft, with a cardboard box as a desk,” she recalls. “That was one of my earliest lessons about racing at the professional level; you have to be willing to start at the very bottom and do whatever needs doing. Over the course of my time with them I learned not only about racing, but also about working with a team, working with data systems, writing contracts, doing budgets, creating sponsor proposals and a dozen other things. I was definitely thrown into the deep end, and loved every minute of it.” Gundlach won Star Mazda’s prestigious Performance Friction ‘Crewman of the Year’ award when the Andersen/Walko team made its series debut in 2005. When the team split up, she continued working for Walko Racing (while simultaneously graduating from Pitt with a Mechanical Engineering degree) from 2006-2007 before moving to the newly-formed Goshen Racing Star Mazda team in 2008. That team only lasted one year and she was invited to join the Star Mazda Championship at its headquarters in Pacoima, CA as series Engineer, a position that also included project management and trackside support. “Timing is everything,” says Lotus HVM Technical Director Tom Brown. “We had an opening available in our Engineering department and Kate came highly recommended. We had a chance to meet at Long Beach and everything clicked. Having her on board will clearly strengthen our group.” About Lotus HVM Racing HVM Racing was founded by Keith Wiggins and is based in Indianapolis, Indiana. The 2012 season marks its eleventh year of competition since forming in 2001. Since its inception, HVM Racing has earned six victories, two pole positions, 22 podiums, 40 top-five finishes and 97 top-tens. The team also earned “Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year” honors with current driver Simona De Silvestro in 2010. HVM finished fourth and third, respectively, in the Champ Car World Series in 2006 and 2007, and earned drivers Mario Dominguez and Robert Doornbos Rookie of the Year honors in 2002 and 2007, respectively. Lotus HVM Racing can be found online at www.hvmracing.com. Follow the team on twitter at www.twitter.com/HVMRacing and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/HVMRacing. About Star Mazda Championship presented by Goodyear For 2012, the Star Mazda Championship presented by Goodyear will be again be a major part of the Mazda Road to Indy. The 2012 schedule currently includes 17 races on 10 weekends, most with IndyCar. Rising stars from around the world will compete on road courses, street circuits and ovals in front of more than a million fans as they compete for prizes valued at $1.5 million, including a scholarship to move up and race in the 2013 Firestone Indy Lights series. Drivers 16 and older are welcome to compete and the Star Mazda Championship also features the Expert Series for drivers 30 and older. The Star Mazda Championship features standing starts, wheel-to-wheel racing at 160 mph and budgets a fraction of other top open-wheel ladder series. For more information on the Star Mazda Championship please visit www.starmazda.com. |
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