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Bussell Races Up Pro Learning Curve - Part 2 |
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August 9. In a certain sense maybe Homestead-Miami seemed not too
difficult, as sometimes the first day of school doesn’t seem too
difficult. But look out. The second day they pour it on,
and that’s the Phoenix assignment! 
Now Nick changed his tone quickly. “That was a rough
weekend. We knew coming in that this track was going to be one of
our biggest challenges of the year. Number one, it’s a tough
track. Number two, we didn’t get to test there and for the most
part everyone who was quick had been there at least once. The IPS car
is faster, bigger, the steering feels different, the seat of the pants
feels different, and everything feels different. I had some
experience dodging the wrecks and that was good and bad.
Obviously it helped us advance in the finishing order [5th, having
qualified 11th] because we were really struggling with getting me
comfortable with the car.”
“I was a little disappointed when we left there because I didn’t feel
that I had gained enough experience for when we come back there next
year. That was because I didn’t know what the car was doing. They
said, ‘Do you want to pit and make a change on the car under
caution?’ I said, I don’t even know what the car has been doing
so let me drive it the way it is, because I don’t know what to tell
you.”
There were the five different accidents that took seven of the fifteen
cars out of the race. Talk about a learning curve!
“I knew something with those cars was going to happen at the
beginning. Whether it’s just good luck or instincts or whatever,
I don’t know. I told my spotter on the radio before the initial
start, ‘Man, I’m not going to truck it down here, and I’m not getting
up on anybody’s gear box.’ And then those guys spun right there
in front of me on the start. I dodged the first
accident.”
“When the second restart came I said, hey, something is going to happen
on this restart, too, and I’m not getting real close. There’s no
point in challenging these guys right at the start of the restart
because I don’t know even what my car is going to do when we make it to
Turn 1 after all of those caution laps. [The weather for that March day
was one of the coldest on record and the track was also cold.] Sure
enough, out comes the green flag and it happened again. I avoided
that in part because of anticipation.”
“In the end it was good to get a 5th place finish and walk out of there
with a whole car; and not have to pay for a huge amount of crash
damage. It was still a frustrating weekend, and it’s a hard
track. I don’t know enough about it yet and I want to get back
there soon. Hopefully I’ll get some testing in there this winter
and get used to that track. I was totally mystified when I left,
I can tell you that.”
Nick took a moment to reflect back on those first two oval races, and
then said, “I’ve talked to a few people this year about the
feedback the car gives you at a place like Phoenix vs. Homestead, which
is obviously totally different. When I went to Phoenix I didn’t
even know what the car was going to do. So when I was feeling all these
new sensations I didn’t know if it was going to spin out or it was just
going into a 4 wheel slide or what. I’m feeling different
movements and stuff in the suspension system that you wouldn’t normally
feel at a place like Homestead because of the banking and things of
that nature. I just didn’t know what to expect. But I still
learned a lot while I was out there in Phoenix.”
The next race on the tour was the road/street race at St.
Peteresburg. But before that race the IRL had a practice for the
Pro’s on the IMS road course since the streets of St. Pete weren’t
available for that before the race. Not having a practice on the
Homestead road course earlier it was a chance for Nick to at least see
how his car handled. Now Nick would be back in a more familiar
racing environment.  Photo Credit: Joanna Edwards
“That was fun and it definitely helped. We only did about 30
laps. We did about half as much as everybody else. We didn’t want
to waste the equipment, tires and the fuel. The conditions for
the F1 race weekend would be totally different than at that test. We
wanted to see kind of what the car was going to do on a road
course. I wanted to get myself around Indy and get a visual
picture in my head about the track, where the turns are, what kind of
radius through the corners, the braking points. We wanted to
establish a little bit of a base line on how good the car was, and it
felt good from the get-go. Before the morning session was over we
were second quickest.”
“Then in the afternoon we got bumped down but we were pretty fast and
fairly happy with the car. That helped us going to St. Petersburg
as far as kind of knowing what the car was going to do, how it was
going to respond under braking, down shifting and things of that
nature.”
Help it did at St. Petersburg. “We qualified well and we ran
well, although we didn’t set the world on fire, but we knew we had a
good car.” Nick qualified 4th and finished 3rd, his first podium.
However, the race started with a big accident right in front of Nick.
“I kind of had a feeling on that, too, after Phoenix. I don’t
know, it was kind of instinct and kind of luck. I was talking to
Travis Gregg before the race and he says, ‘What do you think is going
to happen on the start?’ I said, what I think is going to happen
on the start is that somebody from the 3rd , or 4th or 5th rows
is going to come blitzing down the inside, brake really late and take
out some of the front guys. I hope that one of them is not
me. Because Travis was starting 9th he says, ‘So I might be
sitting pretty good?’ And I said, yeah, I was here for the
ChampCar race in 2003, and just about every race they had with the
support races somebody goes flying down the inside and wipes out
someone towards the front.”
“I asked my spotter before the race if he could go down to the Turn 1
grandstands because I knew someone was going to come from behind
me. Sure enough I’m going down to the first corner and my spotter
says, ‘Inside, inside, inside,’ and I see a car come up the
inside. I’m going fast enough so I brake and he goes sailing past
me with his brakes locked up and right through the side of Simmons.”
“That’s what happened and I figured that was going to happen. I
was able to miss it but it slowed me down enough steering through the
carnage that the leaders were too far gone and without a caution I had
absolutely no chance. But with a caution I might have had a
chance but it didn’t pan out Third place was still good and
I thought I drove fairly well. I was happy with how quick I was
going and we were all setting quick lap times. I don’t think there was
a lot more I could have done the way the race worked out. All
three of us just drove flat out and that was as far as we could go at
the end.”
“But the event itself was tremendous for the Indy Racing league and I
was really happy to be on the podium for the first IRL road race.
To stand on the podium, that was pretty cool!”
“I think as a team we did really exceptional for the start of the
season’s first three races, considering the situation. Our guys
on the team are not new but the team is and I’m a new driver. And then
there was getting all the resources in place and such a tight
budget. The car has been flawless. Tony and the mechanics
have done a suburb job and Chuck Buckman in engineering has been
good. We’re just learning each other and taking our time and not
getting too crazy on set ups because on ovals if you’re careless they
can bite you in a hurry. That’s not a secret that you can crash
pretty easy on an oval. I’m not saying that we’re not pushing but
we just can’t afford to write a car off.”
Nick had now taken the first three big steps up the Pro Series learning
curve. In addition to the knowledge learned and experience
absorbed, he had recorded two second row qualifications and a third
place podium finish. He had also finished all but one of the 197
race laps. In the courses of those first three races 12 cars had
gone out due to accidents; Nick was not one of those.  Explaining new move to Wade and Arie
The following race was the Futaba Freedom 100 at the 2.5 mile
Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the home of the world’s greatest auto
race, the Indy 500. The race did not turn out as Nick would have
liked, or as he expected. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway
ALWAYS teaches drivers something, though. It did Nick
Bussell. He had a major learning curve moment that he handled
with incredible skill.
In the field of 18 cars Nick qualified 8th, but did not have the speed
necessary to get further up towards the front during the race. He did,
however, have his own race with a pack that ran towards the back of the
field that included Marco Andretti and Chris Festa.
On lap 37 of the 40, Nick was running 10th, with Marco Andretti in
front of him in 9th. As Marco came out of Turn 4 on the restart
after the race’s third yellow, German Quiroga, who was ahead of him,
and had been down very low, spun into the middle of the track.
Marco did a perfect defensive spin, going high, to avoid Quiroga.
As Nick then came out of 4 there in front of him were the two cars
cross-wise in the track. Nick’s defensive spin was even more
brilliant than Marco’s as he went down low to successfully avoid
both. All three drivers avoided contact with anything. Nick
was able to continue the race and finished 39 of the 40 laps. He
finished in 15th place with another lesson about restarts and the
importance of looking far enough ahead on ovals.
About the spin, Nick said he was staying as close as he could to Marco
in hopes of getting a chance to pass him on the restart, and was right
behind him when Marco made his brilliant defensive spin.
Nick modestly said, “It was hard to see because of the smoke from
German and Marco. I just barely brushed the brakes to take a
little bit of speed off to see where I was going. My car hooked
left and went into a spin and missed both cars. Afterwards there
were some people who suggested that I should have just stayed off the
brakes and gone straight through the smoke so I would have finished
higher. There was no way I was going to do that when I couldn’t
see.”
He had this to say about the race in general: “That was
challenging going to Indy for the first time because of the low banking
and four distinct 90 degree turns. The racing was pretty
difficult because there was only one groove and the dirty air hampered
our car a fair amount. So it was hard to pass, and changing the
weight jackers, bars, or the line wasn’t helping. There wasn’t a
lot of passing there other than by a couple guys. Maybe it was
partly our set up because we weren’t getting the speed we thought we
should have.”
The Texas race followed. This track has the highest banking of
all, 24 degrees – high speeds and high G’s. It is a track that
can normally be raced two abreast all the way around. It is also
a drafting track. Nick qualified 6th and finished 5th.
Travis Gregg was on the pole with a 187.517 mph, and led the race from
start to finish, except for one lap. Travis’ fastest race lap was
186.850. Bussell recorded the fastest lap of all during the race with a
188.445 mph. It was another step up the oval track learning curve.
About the Texas race Nick enthusiastically remarked, “That was the most
fun I’ve had racing this year. I learned a fair amount about
running in dirty air. The car was moving around a lot there even
though it was high banked. I wasn’t flat out all the way around
and had to lift. The car would kind of slide coming off of Turn 2
and you had to anticipate the understeer. And if you had a little
too much dirty air on the nose the car would push out. Then on
the next lap, if the front end was good, you had less down force on the
car and the back end of the car would slide.”
“So you really had to anticipate, to the best of your ability, what the
car was going to do ahead of time. A couple times I had a few
moments coming out of Turn 2 where I almost crashed because the car was
wiggling so much. So in that race I learned about that, but I
also had a lot of fun running in a pack of five cars where the dirty
air effects varied depending on where you were.”
The following race was back in Nick’s highest track type comfort zone,
the Liberty Challenge on the IMS F1 road course. He stunned everyone,
except himself, by qualifying on the front row next to pole sitter
Marco Andretti. Still the learning curve can throw you surprise
lessons as Nick learned.
“We had a problem with the start. I anticipated correctly what
Marco was going to do coming down for the start, but my car didn’t
respond right. I thought at first it was a gearing or shifting
problem but realized that at the green flag the motor just sat there on
the 7000 rev limiter when I shifted, then it cleared, and when I
shifted again it did it again, and then it cleared out again.
When the motor acted like that I got blown away by Simmons and
Cunningham [who started 3rd and 4th]. Then when I got down to
Turn 1 I got punted by Festa [who had started 6th] and pushed out of
the way, and I ended up in 5th. After the race I saw that contact
bent my rear wishbone.”
“On the straightaway we didn’t have enough speed to pass any of those
guys, and on the turns I couldn’t pass because I couldn’t brake late
enough on Festa because he was trying to brake late on
Cunningham. I drove my heart out in that race, but I think all
three of us did because on the video you can see all three cars
wiggling and jumping around. We were all trying our hardest to go
as fast as we could, and I know I drove harder that I did at St.
Petersburg.”
Nick finished 4th, behind the three podium finishers, in order,
Andretti, Cunningham and Festa. Simmons who had been running
ahead of Nick dropped out of the race with mechanical problems. 
As it turned out, the IMS road race was the last for Nick with J. L.
West Motorsports. The team was unable to continue on, reportedly
for financial reasons. Now Nick was suddenly without a
ride. At the last minute, just before the Nashville race
qualification, Tony George and Vision Racing were able to come to
Nick’s rescue, and offered him a ride in their number 9 car, which Ed
Carpenter had run at the IMS Liberty Challenge. Larry Curry would
become his new team manager. Nick now had fellow rookie Jay Drake
as his teammate, as well as veteran Jon Herb being an extended family
teammate.
Nick arrived in Nashville on the Thursday afternoon before the race,
and joined the team just in time to help them switch over the car’s set
up from Ed’s road race configuration to that now needed for the 1.33
mile, 14 degree banked, high speed Superspeedway.
With Nick new to the team and the car, and the team and the car new to
Nick, and the race being on Saturday, not the usual Sunday, well
nobody’s expectations for the race were over the top. Nick
qualified 9th and finished a respectable 5th.
But, hey, this is also just part of the learning curve. As Nick
said, “We missed the set up a little, but considering that we were new
to each other and I didn’t get into the car before Friday we were
pretty happy with the result. Even though I didn’t practice at
Nashville earlier we had pretty good data from the team. We knew
we would have a better car going into Milwaukee.”
By the following weekend in Milwaukee everyone on the team had caught
their breath a bit. “Still,” as Nick said, “I didn’t go into
Milwaukee with any short track confidence after Phoenix. And with no
short track practice in between Phoenix and there I was pretty
worried. Although I hadn’t practiced at Milwaukee, I knew what
type of track it is, and that this track can bite you in a hurry.
You need to respect it, don’t crash, have a good run, but don’t be
surprised if you don’t run well.”
Going in with this outlook of what the learning curve might throw at
him on the oldest of all oval tracks, The Milwaukee Mile, Nick was a
student on full focus. Bussell qualified 5th. Race day,
however, was at the extreme opposite of that at Phoenix.
Milwaukee had a record 100 degrees that day and 130 degrees on the now
very slippery track surface. In spite of all the issues and
learning curve challenges, Nick drove a very good race, and ended up
with a podium 3rd place finish.
“We got the car working pretty well, and we had data from the team’s
experience for the set up. Still, I was driving around but I
wasn’t really challenging anybody. So being only the second race
with the team we were pretty happy with a third place finish. But
after Milwaukee I feel more confident about going into Pikes Peak with
its one mile track.”
Part of that increased confidence, as Nick said, was because, “I’ve
learned so much from Larry Curry already that I feel that I’ve been
working with him all year, so I think the rest of the year is looking
pretty good. It’s also nice to have two teammates now (Jay Drake
and Jon Herb), and they are good guys, too.
At this point, eight races into the 14 race season, Nick has had five
top six qualifications, and six top five finishes, including two 3rd
place podium finishes [one on a road course and one on an oval].
He has finished all but 2 laps of the 506 race laps to date. Nick
and Cunningham are the only two drivers to have been running at the end
of all eight races. His car has not been one of the 17 cars that
have gone out of races so far because of accidents. Then there
was his fastest race lap also.
How does Nick see himself at this point on the Pro learning
curve? He said, “I’m really happy to be with Vision Racing, but
also grateful to the J. L. West Motorsports’ team for getting us as far
as we got with them this season.”
Still, there are seven more tracks to go this season, each with
challenging lessons of their own to teach and to be learned.
These are the lessons that Nick passionately wants to learn.
So now you know where the guy in 4th place in the Mendards Infiniti Pro
Series points standing came from. Keep an eye on where he’s
going. Nick Bussell has his eye on continuing to race up the Pro
Series learning curve to the IndyCar Series and the Indy 500!
The next Pro test comes up on SATURDAY, August 13, at the fast Kentucky
Speedway 1.5 mile tri-oval. Last year’s pole was at 190.398 mph and the
fastest race lap was 190.640 mph. [The IndyCar race is on Sunday
the 14th.]
Nick Bussell’s official web site is: www.nickbussellracing.com
[fromthetrack.com would like to thank Joanna Edwards, JL West Motorsports, for arranging the first interview with Nick.] |
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