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Bussell Races Up Pro Learning Curve - Part 1 |
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August 9. If you’ve looked at the current Pro Series championship
points standings you have seen three familiar rookie names in the top
three spots – Cunningham, Camara, Gregg. You have heard about
them from the season’s first race at Homestead-Miami when Travis and
Jaime qualified 1-2 and finished 1-2, and Wade turned in the fastest
lap of the race and finished fourth. But you might be thinking,
who is this guy, Nick Bussell, who suddenly has appeared in the points
standing’s fourth spot, and where did he come from?  Photo Credit: Joanna Edwards
Nick is a rookie, and yes, he is the guy who started the season in that
beautiful gold trimmed, black, J. L. West Motorsports’ number 21 car,
but was last seen in The Milwaukee Mile podium third spot, after having
gotten out of a dazzling blue, red and white Vision Racing number 9
car.
It is time for you to meet rookie Jay Drake’s new teammate, and find out more about Nick Bussell.
When you look at the Pro Series race entry lists you see two groups of
drivers, the veterans and the rookies. The veteran names are
familiar; Luyendyk, Jr., Herb, Simmons, Roth. They have gotten to the
Indy 500, in one way or another, and want to get back. And then
there are this year’s rookie names, the five we have mentioned, as well
as Chris Festa and Marco Andretti. They want to get to the 500
for the first time. But the step is huge. The rookies have
already learned much just to get to the Pro Series, but their IRL
education is just beginning and there is so much more they will need to
master.
One of the great, exciting features of the Pro Series is the thrill of
watching these rookies move up the steep learning curve as the season
progresses. When the IRL says this is a development
series they mean it with a capital “D”. Just watch them and see
some of the best open wheel racing you’ll find anywhere, and meet some
of the greatest young racing personalities you will find
anywhere. Recently we featured Jay Drake, and he told you
candidly what the front end of the Pro learning curve looks like to an
oval background driver. Now you’ll hear very candidly what that
curve looks like to Nick Bussell, a driver with a road course
background.
When we are kids the learning curve is the thing in the class room at
school that is associated with the subject that is the hardest; the one
we like the least, but have to take and pass – or take it
again. Sports are different though. You are either good at
a particular sport or you’re not. A particular sport is either
fun or it is not. But, what is there to learn? Just keep
doing it and have fun. For Nick Bussell, as a child, the idea of racing
looked like and seemed like just plain fun.
As Nick explains, “When I was born [April 1, 1983, Ionia, Michigan]
neither of the families on either side were involved in racing.
But there was an interest in racing from both sides, and that’s how I
became interested at an early age.” Nick’s grandfather died when
he was 2 years old, but he remembers his grandmother telling him about
NASCAR, Richard Petty and about going to Daytona. By the late
80’s Nick’s father was working for Autostyle and they sponsored Indy
car driver Scott Brayton. As a result, Nick started to get
interested in racing and began watching on TV. Then, as Nick explained,
“I started riding a dirt bike when I was 9, and at first I wanted to
race those, but that never materialized.”
Just after Nick turned 12, however, he arrived at the foot of the open
wheel racing learning curve. That’s when he got his first
go-kart. As he said, “I had never actually seen a go-kart race in
person. I’d seen one race on TV, saw some pictures in magazines,
and said, that’s what I wanted to do. And we started it.
The first time I actually saw a car at a track was on my first practice
day. It looked kind of intimidating, but I just went out there
and had fun with it. Then I knew that it was something I really
wanted to do.”
“It wasn’t that I knew then I wanted to make racing a career, but at
that age you kind of look up to race car drivers and want to be like
them. For a few years there it was mainly a hobby, but I was
super competitive and wanted to do as many go-kart races as I could.
Still, it wasn’t until I was 16 or 17 that I started to take it
seriously.” 
Nick had been winning, including some championships, but Michigan,
where he and his family lived, was not exactly the mid-west center of
karting. If he was going to find out just how good he was and how
far he could go, he needed to be running more races and against tougher
competition. The World Karting Association, WKA, operated east of
the Mississippi, and they raced primarily in Ohio, Indiana and
Florida. Nick realized, with the support, agreement and approval
of his father and mother, that if he was really going to be serious and
get anywhere he needed to be living in one of those states.
Fortunately, a family in Ohio invited him to come live with them.
And they owned a kart shop where Nick could work. Now Nick was ready to
seriously jump onto the open wheel racing learning curve.
As he explained, “I took up home schooling to be able to move from Michigan to Ohio.
It was a good experience for me and the real racing success started to
come. I attribute that to the situation I was in. The family in Ohio
was also very supportive and the shop that they ran was very
competitive. We had good engines and chassis, and I learned more
about the equipment. For some of my races that year [2000] I built the
chassis, built the engine, assembled it, scaled it, prepped it, the
whole nine yards. I was basically not quite 18 and when I won a couple
of nationals in Charlotte, NC, that’s when I knew what I wanted to do
for my career. Starting around the end of the 2000 season, that 3
year spread was our most successful time in karting.”
By the time Bussell finish the karting phase of his early career he had
really cleaned up in the World Karting Association. He won a
dozen Divisional championships, three Grand National titles, a formula
Yamaha Senior 100 cc kart class national championship, and in 2002, the
WKA Triple Crown, which represented the points championship in 100cc
clutch, 125cc shifter and 100 Spec Can karts.
Along the way, he took the time to attend the Skip Barber Racing School
on a scholarship to see what real open wheel racing cars were like. The
next seed was now planted. Although Nick was planning on
running the early winter 2003 karting tour in Florida, and then another
summer campaign, the open wheel car seed began to
sprout.
“I just got to the point where I sat down and talked to my parents and
said, ‘I know we spent the past couple months setting up for
2003. I love karts and we’re doing it as a family, but I’m
getting older and I need to get moving on to cars. I think we’d
be better off to spend the rest of 2003 developing and learning in some
kind of car series.’ We just made a decision and in less than a
month I was racing in the Fran-Am 2000 North American Pro Championship
Series, driving for Houston, TX, based GTI Formula Motorsports.
The decision was quick, but the transition was very difficult.”
From his karting experience Nick had learned something about how to
move up the learning curve faster – live where the team is and hang
around the team guys and the shop as much as you can. “When I joined
the GTI team I also moved down to Houston, and worked for the team part
time. The owner put me in a two-bedroom apartment and my roommate
worked for the team also.”
This series had open wheel formula cars with wings, a four cylinder
engine with about 170 hp, and a 6-speed sequential gear box. That
Series was new in 2002, and raced in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, but
the cars were also used in Europe, all over South America and a lot of
different places to develop drivers for Formula One. “When I joined
that road racing series,” Nick noted, “I was competing against a lot of
drivers who came from other countries with 2-3 years of experience in
the same type of car.” 
“We just knew going in that year it was going to be a tough year.
The Series was hugely competitive with as many as 36 cars. Our
budget was very tight so there was no practice prior to the
races. We didn’t do our testing until each time we went to a
race. For me the tracks were all new and I had to learn
everything from scratch. So that year was a big transition, but I
feel I learned a lot by years end.”
Running in the 2003 Series Nick had one pole and two-fourth place
highest finishes. He ended up 10th overall in the points
standings.
His plan originally was to run a second year with the Series, but
factors beyond his control came into play. By the end of the 2003
season the Series was in a terminal financial state.
The Series was reorganized for 2004 as the North American Formula
Renault 2000 Championship. Unfortunately, there would only be about 15
cars in the Series. As Nick said, “A lot of the teams had been
turned off by the deal, and had left and did Star Mazda or something
else along those lines.”
Nick’s roommate, Tony, had left the team at the end of the 2003 season
and moved back to Indianapolis. Nick called him in the spring of 2004
and said, “I want to come to Indianapolis, do you know anybody I can
live with? Tony said he did, as his roommate was moving out of
state. I said I’ll move in with you, but I need to get a part time job
somewhere while I work on my racing career. And Tony said, my
friend, Jeff West owns a carbon shop, I’ll ask him.” Nick was
soon living and working in Indianapolis.
He made two starts in the new Formula Renault 2000 Series, but by that
time, however, Nick had other names on his mind. The names were
Infiniti Pro Series, IndyCar Series, and the Indy 500. As Bussell
related, “And that’s when we decided that if I wanted to be in the Pro
Series this year [2005] we needed to stop racing in the Renault series
and save up some money.”
As Nick explained, Jeff’s company, Indy Performance Composites [IPC],
does a lot of carbon fiber and composite work for the IRL, USAC and
NHRA. As examples, IPC makes the camera pods on the top of the
Indy cars, sprint car wing end caps and does funny car body repair work.
“I went to work for Jeff West, in his carbon shop and that is how the
whole Pro deal started. We went to lunch one day and I asked him, do
you know anyone who runs a Pro Series team that I might be able to test
with and potentially run with? And he says, ‘I’ll do it. I’ve been
wanting to do that, but I didn’t want to start a team first and then be
driver hunting at the end of the year. So if you want to do this
thing we’ll start a team’.”
That was the beginning of the J. L. West Motorsports Pro Series team
which was formalized in November of 2004, with Jeff and Laura West
being the owners. Nick would be the driver, his roommate, Tony
Mizialko, the chief mechanic and Jeff the team manager. For Jeff
West this was not a completely a new experience. He had spent 15
years racing supermodifieds, midgets and NASCAR Busch Grand National
Series cars. After that he worked for Heritage Motorsports and
Cheever Racing before founding IPC. 
On February 23, 2005, Nick Bussell arrived on the door step of the
IRL. He would start living his dream of being in the IRL.
He was about to take his first drive in an Infiniti Pro car. It
was the day of his rookie test. He would now be on the fast track
to Indy. He would also be on the steep learning curve to
Indy! The easy part was over. The cars were bigger. The
cars were faster. The cars were much more expensive. The
competition much tougher. The tracks were big ovals and small
ovals, high banked ovals and flat ovals. It was time to go
wheel-to-wheel at speeds approaching 190 mph. And new for this year,
four different challenging road courses.
The first three tracks are the initiation test. They are tracks
the Indy cars race on. The opener would be at Homestead-Miami
Speedway, a 1.5 mile oval with 20 degree banking on the turns.
You run this track flat out as fast as your car will go – up to 188 or
189 mph laps. And you draft.
Then you go to the 1.0 mile Phoenix International Raceway, the toughest
oval of them all the IndyCar drivers say. This track has a dog
leg on the back straight and higher banking than the straight front
straight. Turns 1 and 2 are tighter and higher banked than Turns
3 and 4. It is a track famous for accidents by veteran drivers,
not to mention rookies.
The third race would be an unknown through the streets of St.
Petersburg, Florida, around a 1.8 mile road course with its 14 turns.
If you pass these first three tests then you are up the learning curve
high enough to next get to race on the 2.5 mile oval Indianapolis Motor
Speedway, the track of the Indy 500, before the biggest crowd you’ve
ever raced before. Soon after you will be racing on the same road
course at Indianapolis used by the Formula One cars. And so it
will go for 14 races; 10 ovals and 4 road courses.
To get another idea of what the start of the IRL learning curve is like
we asked Nick Bussell to take us through his first three races in some
detail. Nick agreed. Remember, Nick came to the IRL with a background
as a road racer not an oval racer like, e.g., Jay Drake. Here is
Nick’s story.
“We were hoping to do some testing during the winter months. We
didn’t get to the Test in the East or West at Homestead or Phoenix
prior to the start of the season. The only test was one day at
Homestead to pass my rookie test. I only did about 100 laps
total.”
“The first few laps I went out there and obviously I was running half
speed, came in, they did a systems check on the car, we went back out
again, started building up speed and I thought, this is pretty
fast. It took a handful of laps to get somewhat acclimated but in
10 laps I was flat out. So I got pretty compfortalbe driving the
track. It was interesting feeling the high banking and the G
forces there. It also took some getting used to how the car fed
information back into me, you know the feedback. There really
isn’t a ton of feedback coming into the car on an oval compared to on a
road course like St. Petersburg that gives you a lot more feed back.”
“I had that question, ‘What’s it like,’ from some guys who race
go-karts. I said it’s not what everybody thinks it is. It
is technically easier than running a road course but at the same time
the easier it gets the harder it gets. That means the easier it
is the more competitive it’s going to be, and that’s part of what makes
the racing so close in the IRL. So there wasn’t a lot technically
to learn but there was a lot to learn about how the car feeds info back
to me. I had to quickly learn about going down the straightaway
and letting the car turn into the corner by itself and not by
initiating the turn like you would on a road course. I had
to make sure to stay relaxed and look way ahead. I had some
things to learn there, not overwhelming stuff, but definitely some
things to learn there.”
“Right from the get-go in the very first practice session for the race
I was at the top of the charts. And they were talking to me on
the radio, ‘Just stay out there.’ I said the car feels
awesome. It’s scrubbing very little, not pushing and not loose.
I’m comfortable flat out. And they were, ‘You’re P1, just keep it
going.’ I thought that’s cool, new team, new driver. Nobody
knows who we are. I’ve only done 100 laps around this place and I’m the
fastest against the Schmidt cars and all of these guys who have been
here with a huge data base and information. And then right at the
end of the session, I got bumped down a couple of spots. But the
first session was like, wow, this is cool, we’re really here!”
“Driving in traffic at those speeds was a different experience.
Unfortunately I didn’t get a lot of experience with that prior to the
race. We kind of missed the set-up a little bit in the race and
that is kind of why we drifted back, as well as running with other
cars. With the air on the car, every time I would even get close
to somebody I would lose the front of the car, and had some pretty bad
understeer. But it happens and we didn’t have a lot of
information to build on. So it was naturally just, hey, that was
the reality of it happening. But our qualifying after practice
was great.” [Nick qualified 3rd in a field of twelve cars.]
“We just didn’t get enough time to run in traffic. So when it
came to race time, between the car being a little bit off and not
running in traffic enough, we kind of drifted back a little bit. [Nick
finished 6th.] But all in all for our first weekend and our
limited testing limited budget, it was a superb effort I think.”
The high speeds and running close in traffic weren’t the only new lessons for Nick.
“Having a spotter was a whole different deal, too. I was really
fortunate to have a great spotter. There’s the issue of
them giving you too much information, or not enough, or trying to pump
you up. I don’t like a guy cheering me on the radio, ‘Keep
digging.’ I don’t want to hear any of that. I’m self
motivated and that’s what it pretty much came down to because my
spotter said, ‘Good, because I don’t tell you any of that anyway.’”
“After the weekend was over he said, ‘What do you want me to do
different?’ I said for our first weekend it feels like I’ve know
you for years. That was perfect. And he says, ‘ I just vary
the information a little bit with each track because I’ve got
experience on how to do that when we go to Phoenix, to road courses and
whatever.’ I said, at Homestead you were spot on. You would
tell me car lengths; you’ve got somebody 5 car lengths back. You
weren’t overloading me with information, not doing this, not doing
that. So that was part of the new experience of having somebody
talking into your ear the whole time.”
“That was definitely different because in the Fran-Am races we did have
radios but honestly they worked about 2% of the time, if I was lucky,
and for about 5 seconds when I passed them on pit lane. That didn’t do
any good. It was definitely good with a spotter being able to
communicate all the way around. That’s definitely a must on the
ovals where the cars run really close.”
The Nick Bussell story is continued in Part 2.
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