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The Driven Life: Katie Hargitt on Fuel the Female

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This is the latest in a series of self-improvement/motivational-themed podcasts (also transcribed for those who prefer to read) involving people in the racing world sharing insight into successful habits. Up next: Katie Hargitt, IndyCar reporter and founder of Fuel the Female.

Fuel the Female has gotten some decent attention and is gaining a lot of momentum. First of all, can you explain to people who haven’t heard of it how you came up with this concept and what you’re trying to accomplish?

I’ve been in motorsports for 20 years, both as a driver and as a reporter. And every step of my motorsports career, I’ve had really powerful female mentors. When I was a driver, I was a part of Lyn St. James’ Women in the Winner’s Circle and her driver development program. Once I got into reporting, I was traveling with ESPN NASCAR as a runner and got close with Nicole Briscoe and Shannon Spake; Jamie Little was pregnant at the time.

So I’ve always just had these great female mentors and I said, “When I’m in the position to give back to girls who want to be in motorsports, I’m doing it.” That’s always been that pie-in-the-sky goal that I’ve wanted to chase.

And with the way the world is going, last year I feel was like the year of the woman. There was this really powerful movement for women internationally and I woke up one day last winter and I thought, “This is the year. We’re gonna do it.”

So I approached my friends at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and asked if we could do just this day where we brought out some high school girls from the Indianapolis area and introduced them to the careers that are available in motorsports as it relates to STEM — so the engineers, the mechanics. Because I feel like there are a lot of resources for female drivers, but not so much those women who are in the technical aspects of the sport.

And they were all on board and so helpful in the planning process, and we brought out 100 Indianapolis public schools high school girls and they kind of “toured” the careers. So Cara Adams, who is the chief engineer at Firestone, came and spoke with them. Jessica Mace, who is a mechanic at Andretti, also came. We had lunch at Firestone, thanks to Lisa Boggs, who is the Director of Motorsports for Bridgestone Americas. And Danica stopped by.

So we just had these really powerful, influential, magnetizing women speak to these girls — a lot of them underprivileged — and it was so energizing to see the way their eyes opened up and they were just drawn to motorsports. It was fun watching these 100 girls fall in love with motorsports in the way I did when I was younger.

That’s so cool. And you’re going to do a similar event coming up?

Yeah. So this year we’re doing pretty much the same thing again. We’ve expanded to a few other public and private schools in the Indianapolis area, which is really exciting to be able to offer this to more girls throughout the Indianapolis area.

And instead of doing a tour of the speedway, they’re actually going to build model race cars this year with the help of engineering students from IUPUI. So I think what’s really cool about that is, they will see how your career can progress. You go to school — you’re an engineering student, for example — and then the professional women will pop in throughout the day. So they’ll see the student who grows into the professional woman and be able to see themselves in these different roles throughout the day, and the day will culminate in them racing these cars across those famous yard of bricks. Not on the track — that will be a little bit busy — but the yard of bricks extends past the pagoda (in the fan zone).

Let’s back up for a minute and talk about why this is needed. Historically, it seems like motorsports has been a boys club and it feels like this industry overall has been pretty slow to adapt and catch up to other areas in society. Do you agree with that, and do you think there’s a particular reason why that has been the case?

I do feel like that do a certain extent. I’m working on some statistics and some history about women in racing and it’s so hard to believe that women weren’t even allowed in the pits in Indianapolis until 1971. Like, what?

They weren’t even allowed in the pits?

They weren’t even allowed in the pits until 1971! Since that day we have not had a lead engineer, mechanic, or a driver go to victory lane at IMS. It’s 2019. It’s about time that happens.

This season in IndyCar, we don’t even have a female lead engineer on a race team. To kind of put these numbers in perspective, only eight women in IndyCar work on the competition side of things. When I say competition, I mean directly affecting the car. One of the most progressive teams I can think of right out of the box is Scott Dixon’s team. He has two female engineers, Kate Gundlach and Danielle Shepherd, and I like to say that it’s no mistake that he won the championship last year. They have these two really smart, powerful women on his stand.

And to talk about that number eight again, that doesn’t even fill up one full-sized team. So the goal for Fuel the Female is to just make this a normal thing so that we don’t even have to have this conversation anymore. If growing Fuel the Female eventually puts Fuel the Female out of business, so be it. We are a 501(c)(3) so we’re not necessarily a business, but if I don’t have to have Fuel the Female anymore, I’d say it was a success.

Absolutely, yes. And the thing is, obviously women are interested in motorsports. You see plenty of women who want to work in the sport though PR, broadcasting, stuff like that — but they’re not on the competition side as you mentioned. So clearly, there’s some progress to be made and there’s people who would like to do that if their career path happened differently.

Yeah, there’s a substantial divide in what women do in motorsports. There is no problem with women on the communication side; I think we have flooded that area of the business. But there’s definitely a lack of female influence on the technical side and I think there’s where we can really focus our energy.

I could endlessly rattle off numbers of what happens to girls as they grow. By age 6, they believe that STEM is “not for them” or something they can’t achieve. So you have to get to these girls early on to help them realize that this is something they can do. I think with Fuel the Female, by showing them there are these successful women in leadership positions within STEM careers, the numbers are incredible with girls who know women who have succeeded in STEM. So by showing them the success in this unique position, I think we’re really going to help grow the presence of women in motorsports.

How late in a young woman’s life can she go down this career path? Does it have to be decided by at some point in high school? Can it be as late as college? Or is it something that happens even earlier than that?

It definitely happens in your formative stage. You’re communications, Jeff, so at what age did you decide you were bad at math? (Laughs)

Pretty darn early.

For me, it was like middle school, when I started getting into the trigonometry and the geometry and I’m thinking, “What the heck? It’s like I’m reading a completely different language.” So the earlier we get to these girls, the better, because it’s about that middle school age where they’re getting into the hardest math and science that they’re deciding, “This is too hard for me, I’ll just let the guys do it.” And for some reason the way men’s brains develop, they’re generally better at those types of subjects. But that’s not to say that women and girls can’t do it, too.

So yes, getting to the girls earlier is better, but we can get to them as late as high school. Obviously when you start getting into college then you’re talking about changing majors and not having that background information. But in high school they’re still doing the entry level geometry and trigonometry and physics and chemistry, and we can still get to them and change their minds and tell them, “You can do this and you can be good at it.”

Do you feel like in the IndyCar world, women are accepted by the men in the competition paddock? Do they have obstacles? Are people still looking at them like, “What are you doing here? You’re a woman. I’m not used to seeing woman here?” Or is it accepted now?

That’s a hard question because I think everyone’s experience is different. I’ve heard stories of girls saying they know they have to work 10 times harder than the men, but I also think some of that is that they know the history of women in the sport so they feel like they have to work 10 times harder than the men.

I think IndyCar is in a really unique position where we have such a diverse paddock. We’ve got people from Europe, from South America, from Canada where we’re used to these different cultures and we’re used to dealing with different people, so I feel like it benefits us in a sense that women aren’t as out of place because we have dealt with all these different cultures and we’re used to being exposed to that type of thing.

But I’ve also heard stories of some of the female mechanics where it’s little passive aggressive. Things like they’ve never been offered a female shirt and or female pants — where in a team uniform, if you have to wear that and you’re a smaller female, you’re drowning in your clothes. I don’t think we don’t have any of those cases anymore, but that is just within the last few years that some of these women weren’t even offered clothes that fit them.

You mentioned last year seemed like almost to be the year of the female. Just from my own personal experience, I’m more aware now that in general, people tend to hire other people that look like them. And so in order for really change to happen, there has to be more women in these roles so they can hire more women. How realistic do you think it is that you can help make gains in this area?

I think it’s extremely realistic. I just met with Lyn St. James — who like I said earlier, I was part of her driver development program and she stayed very active in my life — and she’s on the board of directors for Fuel the Female. We were just talking about our one-to-three-year goals and our three-to-five-year goals.

In three to five years, we hope that 10,000 girls have been affected by Fuel the Female in a positive way and we can just simply grow the presence of women in motorsports. Because if we get girls in the pipeline early, so they come to our education program and they’re exposed to STEM, they experience that day where they’ve built a race car out of these recycled parts and they raced it across the bricks at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and they’re hooked.

And then they go to school and then they think, “OK, if I want to do that then I really have to study my geometry, I really have to study my biology,” or whatever. Then they go to college and they can get a scholarship to help them continue their career and then they get a mentorship from Cara Adams or Kate Gundlach or Andrea Mueller (from Team Penske), whoever, then we’ve got these girls in the pipeline and they’re encouraging their friends to do it. And I think in no time flat, we don’t have to have this conversation anymore.

You mentioned that you want to impact and affect so many more people in the near future. Where do you see it going beyond IMS? Can you picture it in NASCAR or at all sorts of venues?

Yes. So IMS and IndyCar are what we started with because that’s my wheelhouse. That’s where I’m working right now, and IMS has been so generous to help us with facilities and stuff like that. But we want to grow to NASCAR and NHRA and SCCA, all of the different series across United States, motorsports venues across the United States. Because if we only stay in Indianapolis, we’re only affecting a couple thousand girls, and in order for this to really change, we’ve got to affect that 10,000 number that I talked about.

To me, that’s not an option if that happens or not. It’s going to happen, and we’ve got to make it work. And we can only do that by people who are willing to back this sort of organization. So I hope that we can start making partnerships with motorsports venues across the country and people across the country who are also passionate about this.

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12 Questions with Josef Newgarden (2019)

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The 12 Questions series of interviews continues this week with Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden, the current IndyCar points leader. These interviews are recorded as a podcast but are also transcribed for those who prefer to read.

1. Are you an iPhone person or an Android person, and why?

I’m definitely an iPhone person. I’ve always had Apple products; probably a bit of a fanboy of Apple. I see people go back and forth on the debate where (they say) the capabilities of Android are probably better and the infrastructure people say is better to some degree. But I’ve just always liked Apple products. I like the styling and the design. I remember when the very first iPhone came out and I was so pumped for that and I got the very first iPhone.

You were an early adopter?

Oh yeah, I was right away. I actually remember, Apple had a partnership with a different cellular brand (other than Verizon) — I don’t know why, because they could have chosen a better cellular brand for their partnership for sure — but they came out with a phone that had the iTunes button it. And you could put music on your phone, and that was like really cool to me, because I always listened to music when I was younger. From that moment, I was like, “Man, they’ve got to do something more with phones.” And then obviously the iPhone came out pretty soon afterwards.

But why I use an iPhone is because I integrate everything on Apple. Like I have an Apple computer, I have an iPad — when I need something lighter for travel I’ll use my iPad — and it’s all integrated. Everything that I do is over Apple, so I try to keep it consistent.

2. If a fan meets you in the paddock, they might only have a brief moment with you. So between an autograph, a selfie or quick comment, what is your advice on the best way to maximize that interaction?

If you’re asking me what’s most impactful? A comment is most impactful. It’s great to give a photo, it’s great to give an autograph, and that’s going to last. But I think the personal interaction is what matters most. Whenever you meet someone and you truly meet them instead of just trying to run through people — because it’s hard. You get pulled left and right when you’re walking through the paddock and you don’t want to just brush people off; it’s easy to get caught up just focusing on what you’re doing.

But if you give them a genuine amount of attention and say, “Hi, nice you meet you,” and you maybe learn a little bit about their story or where they’re from — Are they here locally? Did they travel in? — and you give them a nice comment about the track or what you’re doing or thank them for coming. I think as long as it’s meaningful and genuine, that goes the furthest than anything else. I think people will appreciate that the most, in my opinion.

3. When someone pulls a jerk move on the road when you’re driving down the highway, does that feeling compare at all to when someone pulls a jerk move on the track?

No, because it’s more of a jerk move on the track. Because the people driving the race cars know what they’re doing, generally, so when it happens, it’s very purposeful.

You kind of have to take into account that there’s a lot of people on the road in the U.S. who just are so unaware and don’t know what’s going on half the time. So they may have done something to offend you and they have absolutely no idea why — or they’re not even aware that they’ve offended you. So to me, it’s way more of a jerk move on the racetrack.

4. Has there ever been a time where you’ve had a sketchy situation with your safety equipment?

The biggest thing that happens is belts that come undone. That’s a very scary situation. I’ve had that happen once in my career — thankfully only once. It was at a road course, too. I think at an oval you’d be even more timid if your belt came loose or unbuckled.

What happened to me was I had my left side harness, my shoulder strap unbuckled. And I was like, “I don’t know what to do in this situation.” So I just kept on driving. And then fortunately, I’m pretty sure we had an exhaust failure, like I caught on fire and I had to come into the pits and I retired the race, thankfully. So like it coincided with this terrible safety issue. But that’s the one I hear about a lot.

Oh! I have an even better one. I have had a wheel fall apart in my hands while driving down a straightaway at 150 miles an hour, going into like a 40 mile-an-hour right-hander on a street course. Walls really close, not a lot of runoff, and the wheel literally just came apart.

It’s not like you can just put it back on. I’ve seen that before where guys have the wheel come off. I think Dale Jr., it happened to him once — the wheel popped off and he put it right back on immediately and he was fine.

This thing like, the bolts fell out of it. The hub was completely disconnected. So I just had the wheel in my hands and just fortunately the caster of the car just straightened it out and I just went into a runoff zone and I didn’t hit anything. So then I radioed in — I was like, “Hey, I’m just sitting here. I have the wheel in my hands. I can’t go anywhere. You guys have to come get me.” So that was the worst situation that’s ever happened, and it I think it was quite embarrassing for everybody. But yeah, you don’t want your wheel to just fall apart in your hands when you’re doing 150 miles per hour.

Where was this?

St. Petersburg. I think it was 2013, it was my second year in IndyCar.

5. If your team put a super secret illegal part on your car that made it way faster, would you want to know about it?

Yeah, I think I would, because I’m a control freak, and I crave information — but in a positive way. Like I feel the best when I have the most knowledge of something, whether it’s the session we just ran or the way I’m driving the car. I want to have as much knowledge as possible and understand everything. So I think I would want to know about it.

But at the same time, if I didn’t know about it and we were just fast, it wouldn’t bother me. You asked me if I wanted to know, and I’d want to know, but it wouldn’t bother me if I didn’t know.

6. What is a food you would not recommend eating right before a race and are you speaking with personal experience with this recommendation?

I would definitely say don’t experiment too much, which I struggle following myself. It’s hard to not experiment on race weekends. It depends on the driver. If you drive a race weekend where you’re in your motorhome for instance or if you take a motorhome to the track then you can generally control the food you’re eating for the weekend. There’s a lot of guys that don’t do that. I don’t have a motorhome, and outside of the Indy 500, I don’t take a motorhome anywhere.

So I’m at hotels, and finding food is different every night then. You’re going to all sorts of restaurants so it’s hard to not experiment and eat different stuff. But that’s where you get in trouble. Sometimes if you experiment with like a seafood dish, it’s probably unwise, but it’s definitely bit me before.

But then you also get bit by things that you think are fine. I had a lamb dish last year at the season finale — it was just lamb. You know, lamb’s a pretty safe choice, I would think! But I got food poisoning the night before the race in Sonoma last year. So you just never know, it can bite you whenever.

But yeah, seafood to me is the most risky thing in the business. If you’re eating seafood, make sure it’s at like a reputable establishment. That’s the best advice, I would say.

7. Is there life in outer space, and if so, do they race?

I hope so. Goodness, I hope so. I’m a Star Wars fan, so they race in and out of space, they race all sorts of stuff. I think it’s impossible to say that there isn’t life in outer space. I don’t think we know. I think we’re becoming more and more advanced as humans and maybe one day we’ll be able to answer that question from a more educated standpoint. But I would say I think there’s a high likelihood that there’s other life outside of planet Earth. Do they race? I sure hope so. It’s very sad if they don’t.

It would be sad.

We should totally spread that message one day if we meet them and they don’t race.

8. What do drivers talk about when they’re standing around at driver intros before a race?

All sorts of stuff. There’s a lot of people sizing each other up. That’s happening. Actually, everyone in IndyCar is pretty cool for the most part. You’re kind of mentally sizing everybody up, but you’re also not because I think we find that doesn’t really work in IndyCar. You can only do so much of that. You might be doing that with one individual, but for the most part, 90 percent of the people that are there, you’re really just catching up.

It’s like, “Hey, how’s your weekend been? Where are you staying? How’s your car?” Or if you know somebody had a bad qualifying session you talk to them about that. Maybe you both had a bad qualifying session. Like for instance, Ryan Hunter-Reay and me (at Barber Motorsports Park), we were sitting together at driver intros and we’re just like, “Man, this has been a bad weekend.” We both were just struggling. And I think 90 percent of the time you’re talking about what’s already happened that weekend, why your car is not good, how the race is gonna be, if it’s about to rain. Whatever it is, you’re generally talking about racing in those moments.

9. What makes you happy right now?

At the moment, this cookie in my belly makes me very happy. Penske hospitality only travels to like four events now. (Editor’s note: Some IndyCar teams and manufacturers bring hospitality tents to the track with catering for their teams and guests to enjoy.) They used to travel to a lot more. I’m so sad because we have awesome chefs and they always make good cookies. They actually make too good of cookies because then I eat them all. I have like 10 cookies on a weekend, which is not good. So that makes me happy.

Food in general — I’m big into food. I just like to eat. Whenever we’re going out in a different city, I really want to find a good restaurant. But everything makes me happy. Honestly, I’m so fortunate, I live a great life, get to work for Team Penske — which is the coolest. I’m healthy. My family’s healthy for the most part. So no dramas, man. That makes me so happy. I mean, that’s the biggest thing. You wish health for everybody just because you see it all the time, people who have all sorts of struggles. But if you’re healthy and happy and you’ve got a good opportunity to work in life, then that’s all you can ask for.

10. Let’s say a sponsor comes to you and says, “We are going to fully fund the entire rest of your racing career on the condition that you wear a clown nose and an 80’s rocker wig in every interview you do as long as you’re driving.” Would you accept that offer?

Yeah, no problem. It’s absolutely zero issue. I mean, I would like to think I don’t need to do that now to get a sponsor, but if I had to get a sponsor and that’s their gig and they’re gonna support me, I know they’re supporting me and I have to do this, then no problem. Like, can I reveal that to people? I would just tell them that it’s just part of my program. If this is what these guys like and I support them for liking it and they sponsor my race car, no problem. If I can reveal it, then that’s like no issue for me. Whatever you need.

That’s actually not such a terrible request. There could be worse requests, right? I don’t know what people would require, but if that’s the requirement, I could get down for that. That’s OK. Yeah.

11. This is the 10th year of the 12 Questions. There has never been a repeat question until now. Pick a number between 1 and 100, and I’m going to pull up a random question from a past year’s series.

OK. I’m gonna say 81.T

The question is: Where did your first paycheck come from?

Like a real real paycheck? Or can it be, “Hey, you got a check for mowing lawns?”

Thinking back when I asked this question, it was like where was the first paycheck you got that like went into a bank account. Did you mow lawns?

Yeah, I did. I mowed lawns. I had a car cleaning service at one point.

A car cleaning service?

Yeah, I was big into that because I’m kind of like OCD. So detailing cars was something I was very into. I’m into cars, and for me, everything’s got to be pristine. So I kind of fell in love with detailing vehicles and then just parlayed that into a job. Like you can do that for a living. Some people have very successful detailing companies.

So yeah, I mowed lawns and I detailed cars. That’s how I had some income when I was younger. I did this when I was like 15 to 19 years old. I got checks for that, I put them in my bank account, that’s probably been my more successful forays into business when I was younger.

But see, to give the real real job answer, the first time I started making real money was when I got hired in IndyCar. I was 20 — in 2012 — and you don’t get written a check; they send you a wire straight to your bank account. And that’s cool. If that starts happening where you’re driving for an establishment and you’re hired and they’re just transferring you money monthly per a contract, that’s pretty cool. And I remember that very distinctly.

That’s something I would enjoy as well.

It’s awesome, man. And you get to drive the race car! It’s so cool. It’s the greatest!

12. The last interview was with Matt DiBenedetto. He wants to know: What do you think is harder about racing open wheel cars than stock cars, and what do you think is easier about it?

I genuinely believe physically IndyCars are harder. That’s not a knock, it’s just what it is. But I would also preface that by saying the physicality is different. I think overall it’s more physical. If you’re talking about heat management, I think the NASCAR boys have a lot more difficulty than us. The temperatures in their vehicles are much higher, so they have to deal with probably 140, 150 degrees Fahrenheit of temp. We’re not nearly that high. But there’s no power steering (in IndyCars), there’s much higher G-loading because of the weight and downforce that our cars produce, so laterally we make a lot more grip. We go a lot quicker through the corners. I think physically they are tougher to drive.

That doesn’t speak to the difficulty skill-wise to drive the cars. I think physically you have to be a bit more fit to drive an IndyCar. Even Juan Pablo Montoya is a great example, him coming back from NASCAR to IndyCar, he knew he had to lose quite a bit of weight just to fit in the car and then also be fit enough to drive it. So I would say that part is harder.

What is easier? Pitting. Pitting is easier in IndyCar. We have a pit lane speed limiter, we can push on a button, it’s automatic. You still have the difficulty where you can’t speed coming into pit lane, but you don’t have to modulate your speed through the pit lane — whereas NASCAR they have to modulate that off of RPM, they have to do that off their foot. I think that’s more difficult than what we do on the IndyCar side.

I bet a lot of NASCAR drivers would love to have the button.

It’s amazing. I mean, there’s still some skill. You’ve got to get down to the speed limit, you’ve got to be the quickest in that segment. But then it’s easy street for the rest of pit lane. They would love that.

Do you have a question I can ask somebody in the NASCAR garage?

For the next person, what is your opinion on mullets and mustaches? Do you like them? Do you dislike them? Do you have one personally? And if you don’t, do you want to have one? And also, are you allowed to have one? That’s my question. It’s very loaded. If it’s Blaney, you can have a great conversation about that.

Previous interviews with Josef Newgarden:

— Social Spotlight: June 1, 2017

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Five quotes from the Fast 6 at Long Beach Grand Prix

The IndyCar drivers who qualified first through sixth at Long Beach on Saturday — Alexander Rossi, Scott Dixon, Will Power, Josef Newgarden, Simon Pagenaud and Graham Rahal — held a smile-filled news conference after the session, cracking jokes and laughing through several exchanges.

Here are five of the best quotes from the Fast 6:

Josef Newgarden, on how impossibly close to the wall the drivers get at Long Beach:

“It’s kind of like when you’re pulling out of a parking spot and it’s tight on both sides and you back up and you start to turn and you’re like, ‘Man, am I going to miss that car in front of me?’ And your nose is like right there.

“Like 50 percent of the time, I’m just like, ‘Well, I think I’m going to make it. If I don’t, I hit him.’ (Shrugs)

“That’s kind of what it feels like. All the time on every lap, you’re just like, ‘Argh, I could hit — or maybe not.’ Most of the time you don’t. That’s what it’s like for me. It’s kind of fun.”

Graham Rahal and Simon Pagenaud on starting alongside each other Sunday despite their incident at the start of last year’s Long Beach Grand Prix:

Rahal: “(Last year) was like a very minor love tap.”

Pagenaud: (Scoffs in disagreement.)

Rahal: “It’s going to be a lot harder to hit him when he’s next to me. So if I’m going to do it again, I’m going to try really hard to do it.’

Pagenaud: “I think you were next to me…”

Rahal: “No, I was behind you and…”

Alexander Rossi: “It was like a torpedo.”

Pagenaud: “Yeah, a torpedo!”

Rahal: “That’s Power’s issue now, right?”

Will Power: “You behind me?”

Rahal: “Yeah.”

Power: “The difference is I’m from Toowoomba, see, and we fight.”

Rahal: “I’m really not worried about you. I’ve got like 50 pounds on you.”

Pagenaud: “I might not brake in Turn 1 just to make sure I don’t get hit.”

Rahal: “Actually, I would be perfectly fine with that. If you want to do that, that would help. You could like take out everybody and I’ll be good.”

Simon Pagenaud, off to a poor start this season, on proclaiming he was “never gone” after he made the final round of qualifying:

Pagenaud (deadpan): “It’s just my ego coming out. I’m a pretentious person, so I just said these things. Why not say it, right?”

Reporter: “I was wondering if you’re feeling unloved or ignored or if there’s something going on…”

Will Power, his teammate: “I have been ignoring him a little bit.”

Pagenaud: “Actually I have plenty of love, mostly from Will, a lot from Josef (Newgarden), too much sometimes. But no, I feel confident, so I think ego comes out when you’re confident. I think that’s what’s going on maybe.”

Reporter: “Do you have a chip on your shoulder?”

Pagenaud: “A chip? Chips are for dogs, I think. So I don’t have a chip, no. It’s all good. I’m pretty focused, 100 percent. Yeah, might have shown some aggressiveness, fire — and that’s not a bad thing.”

Alexander Rossi, responding to a reporter who said it was tough to pass at Long Beach:

“I don’t know how true that is. I don’t think it’s that hard to pass.”

Graham Rahal on why the drivers seemed so happy after making the Fast Six (final round of qualifying) but not winning the pole:

Rahal: “It’s not even the top six anymore. You feel like if you’re in the top 10, you’ve been solid. Didn’t used to be that way. Obviously, we’d all like to be on pole. It would be even better. But I think you really have to feel a sense of like accomplishment as a team. You can see it across all our mechanics, too; everybody is happy. You make it to the Fast Six, you’ve really done something.

“In my first years in this, if you made it to the Fast Six then you were like decent. And nowadays it’s just like the gap — like this morning, 1.1 seconds across from 1st to 25th over a street course this long (almost two miles) with all the bumps and curves and this and that — nowhere else in the world will you find racing that competitive, period. So I think you should feel proud if you had a good day.”

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How I Got Here with Jay Frye

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Each week, I ask someone in the racing industry to explain how they reached their current position. Up next: IndyCar president of competition and operations Jay Frye sheds some light on his career path. These interviews are recorded as a podcast but are also transcribed for those who prefer to read.

When I first knew of you, it was in the MB2 days. Can you take me back to the start? Did you grow up as a race fan or anything along those lines?

I’m originally from Rock Island, Illinois. My family, we owned a small garbage trucking company. It’s funny — I basically learned how to drive by driving a garbage truck, which is kind of unusual. I was always around mechanical things. I really liked cars and motorsports.

My dad’s company would bring stuff back to our shop — pedal cars and bicycles — and they’d fix them up and send them home. So at a very young age, I always had these cool toys. You know, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. So it was kind of neat to have that stuff. I wish I still had some of it, because there was some cool old metal pedal cars.

I got very heavy into stick-and-ball sports and played basketball, baseball and football all through high school and then went to college on a football scholarship. I played football at the University of Missouri and it was a great time there.

My first job out of college was at Anheuser-Busch and I was a special event manager for the city of Chicago. That’s where I started actually meeting some people in motorsports. Through that, I met some people with Valvoline. And when I left Anheuser-Busch, they thought I was crazy — because things were going really good at A-B. But I wanted to go do this motorsport thing.

So when I went to Valvoline, I ran the NASCAR and the World of Outlaws program.

Was it tough for you to give up the football days, since you’d made it so far?

No. It was a great experience and I’ve got a lot of great friends still in college sports. I’m proud we were able to do that, but it’s a whole other level to go from there to the next level, just like it was to go from high school to (college). I got my degree and met a lot of lifelong friends, and that was enough.

So all along, were you thinking you wanted to do something in sports as a career?

Well certainly going to the University of Missouri, obviously Anheuser-Busch being in St. Louis at the time had a lot of influence on what was happening. A lot of Missouri alumni worked at Anheuser-Busch. So I got to meet a lot of friends there. And obviously A-B was a huge supporter and advertiser of sports. So doing the events in Chicago, you’d have everything from local street festivals to when the Rolling Stones came to town, you’d manage that type of stuff. So it was very unique and a pretty cool job for a 22-year-old coming right out of college. It was a great experience.

So you get to Valvoline and you’re working for them. How did the transition to the team side take place?

I started with Valvoline at the end of ’91, and that was right when they started sponsoring Mark Martin at Roush. And right after that, we put together the deal with Hendrick, which was Jeff (Gordon’s) rookie year (in 1993). That’s when we started the relationship. At that time, I would say it was one of the first B-to-B deals. Not that there weren’t others, but it was a pretty high-profile B-to-B deal.

My office ended up being at Hendrick Motorsports. I was based out of Lexington, Kentucky my first year with Valvoline, but I was never in Lexington, Kentucky. Where the old 25 shop used to be, there was a small building next to it and was called the “Bug Barn.” And the Bug Barn was where Harry Hyde used to work on his Volkswagens. It was pretty cool. So I took the Bug Barn and fixed it up and cleaned it up, and that became Valvoline Racing South back then.

I worked out of there for two or three years. It was very unique being around Rick all the time and being around Jack Roush all the time. Two completely different approaches to the way they do things, but two hugely successful people. So here I am, a 26-year-old who is learning through osmosis from two of the best in the business world and the motorsports world. So that was a really cool experience.

M&M Mars wanted Rick to start what back then would have been a fourth team. Or they were asking about a fourth team. And I don’t think there was much interest in it during that time (from Hendrick).  Rick had some friends who were interested in starting a team, and obviously they had never done anything like that.

So he got me with them, and that’s how MB2 was started. We partnered with Hendrick Motorsports for the engines. I think at that time, people thought it was going to last for two or three years and it’d be something else, and we ended up lasting for 12. Which, to me, part of our success was our survival.

There were a lot of things happening at that time, and I look back at being 30 years old-ish around that time and basically starting a Cup team from scratch and hiring a 24- or 25-year-old crew chief — whatever Ryan Pemberton was at the time — and running it out of an 8,000-square-foot building with maybe 13 people at the time. And to think that team went and sat on the pole at the Brickyard in 1998 (with Ernie Irvan), it was the little team that could.

It was a great experience. You speak of lifelong friends, and the guys on that team, a lot of them were with us for the whole 12 years, which is pretty cool. A lot of them had opportunities to go do something else and they stuck with us, and I’m forever grateful for that.

So as MB2 evolved, I can’t remember all that led into…

…the demise?

Yeah, the demise. I was trying to put that nicely.

The year before that, two of the partners I had in the team had sold to the other partners. And then the last original partner — the sport was getting bigger and bigger, and we were able to bring in Bobby Ginn. Remember, that last year it was called Ginn Racing. Same team, same people, just different name on the door.

A lot of things happened there that, looking back, it was good intentions, I believe, but it just didn’t work out. At that point in the industry, there was a lot of consolidation. So if you think about MB2 basically merged with DEI (Dale Earnhardt Inc. in 2007) who merged with Ganassi. So there’s probably still some MB2 DNA in Ganassi’s Cup team at some point.

But that was tough. That was a really bad time, because you were with this group for 12 years, and there were a lot of people who were with us from Day 1. I took their livelihoods and their families very, very seriously. I mean, I would go without before I let any of those guys or girls go without. So when DEI merged (with Ginn), I had the opportunity to continue — but there was no way I was going to without (everyone). If we all couldn’t, I wasn’t going to be one to stay. So I didn’t.

So then the Red Bull opportunity came up from there?

It was in August (2007) when everything happened. At that point, I did help transition it out. There was a lot of loose ends that needed to be tied up. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do next. At that point, I really thought I might go do something with Hendrick. And then I got a call out of the blue from Lee White at Toyota and he was wondering what I was going to do next. We talked for a long time, and he introduced me to the Red Bull folks.

Jay Frye after Red Bull Racing’s victory at Michigan in 2009. (Getty Images)

With Red Bull, if Toyota had been where Toyota was now, things would have turned out differently. Was Red Bull ahed of its time? What happened in those years?

So their first full season was ’07. MB2, we merged with DEI in 2007, because I started with Red Bull at the end of 2007. Like you said, Toyota was in their infancy. Red Bull was just starting and expectations were pretty high. There was a lot of changeover at Red Bull, because Red Bull North America was involved and some things happened before I got there and next thing you know, Red Bull Austria is overseeing the team. So that was a unique experience.

It was amazing how I got started. I had this meeting with Lee (White) and the next thing you know, I get this call from Red Bull. They’re like, “We’d like you to come see us.” I’m like, “Sure. That’d be great. When do you want me to come?” They said, “How about today?” (Laughs) “Today?” Basically it was, “Come to Austria now.” It was cool.

So I got on a flight the next day, landed and went and met with them. This was a pretty cool, up-and-coming great company that one guy founded with an amazing story how he did it, and to meet them was a really unique experience.

So we talked, I get back to the hotel (after just having arrived) and they call me at the hotel and they’re like, “We want to do it.” It was like, “OK!” We started going through what could happen, I got home the next day, talked about it, we put it together and started about a week later.

I’m proud of what we accomplished there. They struggled a lot, obviously, in 2007. A lot. The next year, I think we got the thing pointed in the right direction. The following year (2009), we made the Chase and won a race. Then Brian (Vickers) got sick; that was for sure a setback when that type of thing happens. Getting Kasey (Kahne) that year was a great thing, a great experience.

But it was cool. The international business thing, I’d never dealt with that much and we got to be good friends with the Formula One team, which was cool. Those guys are still good friends. I would have to go to Austria two or three times a year, and we’d have meetings with Dietrich Mateschitz. It’d be Christian Horner, Franz Tost — and we’d go individually, but we’d kind of be in the bullpen waiting on our turn. There was a lot of lot of good collaboration with Christian and Jonathan Wheatley, the team manager, is a good friend.

You look back and it was a great experience. The only thing I’m disappointed in is I think we really could have made something of it. Red Bull Austria’s passion is Formula One, and rightfully so. That’s what they do. The NASCAR thing to them, they didn’t understand what we were going to need to do to take it to the next level.

Jay Frye speaks with Brian Vickers during their days at Red Bull Racing. (Courtesy Jay Frye)

They expected Formula One level results right away?

Well when we got there, our results were better than that team. If you think about it, this was before the championships. When I was at Red Bull Racing, the first year, (Sebastian) Vettel was still at Toro Rosso. I remember being in one of those meetings and they’re talking about Vettel going to Red Bull Racing, and there are guys on Toro Rosso he wants to bring with him and they’re asking how that works and is that OK? They’re asking me, and I’m like, “Absolutely. You want the driver to be comfortable, and if he’s got some people he wants to bring with him, let him bring them.”

Again, looking back on it, it was pretty cool. The first time we went to visit Red Bull Racing in Milton Keynes (England), you expect F1 to be everything James Bond-ish. So we go to the factory, and part of it is very James Bond-ish and you’re overwhelmed.

But then you go to the back of the shop and there are guys bolting the car together. It’s like, “There are our guys.” It’s familiar. It’s just racing cars, right? A lot of those guys ended up coming to Homestead at the end of the year, and they were overwhelmed by how we did a lot of things. Like to them, they couldn’t wrap their head around 38 races a year. But think about it: They’re running about 20, but they’re going to countries. We were going from Charlotte to Martinsville. So I think that was something they didn’t quite understand.

How did the transition go from Red Bull ultimately to IndyCar? You had been in NASCAR over 20 years by that point. Was there any hesitation about trying that side?

It was exciting. When the Red Bull thing ended, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. Remember, for a year, I did go to Hendrick and do what I could to help.

I had forgotten that.

They didn’t need my help in any way. But I had been around them for a long, long time and they’re great friends and I learned a lot of stuff from them and there’s great trust. They’re like family to me.

So it was a really cool gap year. It was like, “What do I want to do next? Do I want to keep doing the team thing?” The team thing is pretty tough. There’s no revenue sharing. You’ve got to perform on the track and off the track. And again, taking care of the families — I took that very seriously. So it was good to catch my breath.

Over that time period, I got a call from IndyCar wondering what I was going to do next. I talked to them and that’s kind of how it happened. So it was exciting. As with F1, I was very curious about this. A lot of the people in here I already knew — there’s crossover on teams and some manufacturer stuff. But it was also getting to meet Honda, getting to meet Firestone. I’d never really dealt with them. So I was very excited about the opportunity, and it’s been phenomenal to this point. If you think about every day, we’re able to do something to help it grow, to make it better. The approach we’ve taken seems to be well-received.

Jay Frye and Juan Pablo Montoya. (Courtesy of Jay Frye)

If you take into account what you’re doing with IndyCar now, how much do you draw from your NASCAR background? Is it more similar than different?

Oh, it’s way more similar. Again, what do we do? We race cars, right? Yeah, the cars look different. But there’s people involved, and at the end of the day, it’s all about the people who make the cars go fast. So it’s extremely similar.

The main thing is coming from a team perspective. Everything we do, we do to see how it affects the teams. When I first started in this role, one thing we tried real hard to do was to harness the power of the paddock. There’s a lot of really smart people here. Having them help us craft this direction, we came up with this five-year plan. So we know where we’re going, we know what we’re doing. The teams are all part of it. Now we’re just executing it.

Now the plan has actually expanded through 2026 with the engine program. So we know basically where we’re going between now and 2026. We’ve created this cadence with things. As soon as the season is over, we have a team manager meeting. At that meeting, it’s 20 percent about next year — and that’s more blocking and tackling stuff, procedural things — and the other 80 percent we talk about (two years from now).

So you always try to work a year ahead. You never want to obsolete parts, you never want to cost teams money that doesn’t need to be spent. Obviously there are things that happen throughout the course of a season you have to react to that might be expensive, but everybody gets it — a part failure or something.

But everybody was part of this plan starting in 2017 when we froze the manufacturer aero kits. This year, with the new aero kit, that car, everybody had input in it — even from a fan perspective, we put out drawings and renderings to get fans’ reactions and it came back very positive. So we’re like, “All right. Aesthetically, we’ve got our identity back. It looks like an IndyCar.” The manufacturer kits were great, but there was a whole different mindset to it. There was not an aesthetic thing to it, it was about downforce and performance.

This car is very much putting it back in the drivers’ hands, which is what we wanted. It has less downforce. We’ve got a new engine coming in 2021, which will be pushing over 900 horsepower. It’s funny, people ask: “What’s your niche?” Ours is “fast and loud.” And that’s OK — every motorsports series has its thing, and we’re going back to being fast and loud and these cars are hard to drive and cool to look at. And there we go.

You took quite an unusual path to your current job. But for people who would like to follow your footsteps someday, how would you recommend getting to where you are?

This wasn’t part of the plan, but if you look back, I’ve been on the sponsorship side, I’ve been on the racetrack side with IMS and IndyCar, I’ve been on the league side and then obviously the team side. So I think we’ve checked every box from a motorsports perspective.

We have interns who work for us who are phenomenal. They have the desire and the effort and they want to be part of it. You’ve got to be persistent. It’s amazing looking back — I never would have thought I’d be doing what I’m doing now. How does all this happen in your life? Things change, and I’m very excited to be where I’m at. We think we’ve got some good momentum, some good things happening. So just be persistent and don’t be afraid to do what you’re asked to do — and then do twice that. People will notice.

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IndyCar at Portland: Sometimes, racing comes down to luck

Shame on those of us who saw Scott Dixon disappear into a cloud of dust on Lap 1 of the Portland Grand Prix and thought his race was over.

How foolish. How absurd. After all, even casual followers should know Dixon is IndyCar’s MacGyver — able to escape seemingly any situation, even when it looks dire.

Dixon somehow — improbably, incredibly — salvaged a fifth-place finish on Sunday when his day looked screwed from the start. Not only that, he took advantage of untimely cautions and misplayed strategy that affected fellow title contender Alexander Rossi, allowing Dixon to actually extend his lead by three points — to 29 overall — going into the season finale.

These are the kind of things that only seem to happen to Dixon. If you described such a scenario to someone in IndyCar and didn’t attach a name, everyone would know you were referring to the driver of the No. 9 car.

“We got super lucky today,” Dixon said. “You’ve got to take those days.”

Drivers predicted a sketchy start to the race all week, and that’s exactly what happened. As part of a multi-car wreck on Lap 1, Dixon was shoved into the dirt and felt a significant impact — though he couldn’t see what he hit.

“I felt like I wanted to cry,” Dixon said of sitting there while the dust cleared.

He didn’t expect his left front wheel would still be attached when his vision returned, but there it was. And as it turned out, Dixon had the presence of mind to pull the clutch while the crash was occurring — allowing him to keep the engine fired.

While others left on a hook, Dixon somehow put it in reverse, told the safety truck to move and drove away.

“I couldn’t believe the thing was still going,” he said. “I knew it was going to be a pretty lucky day from that point on.”

But that wasn’t immediately evident, because he was tagged for a speeding penalty midway through his comeback and saw all the gains erased.

“I thought on that point, we were definitely on the out,” he said. “Crazy, crazy day.”

Again, though, it’s foolish to count out Scott Dixon. So when his team stuck to a two-stop strategy (the same as race winner Takuma Sato) and Rossi made three, Dixon got the track position needed to extend his points lead.

“Huge day for us points-wise,” Dixon said, then added with no apparent sense of irony: “This might be our lucky day.”

Meanwhile, Rossi looked a bit stunned in the aftermath of his good day gone bad. He had a faster car than Dixon, but was done in by circumstances not of his own doing.

Rossi quickly dismissed the suggestion the damage was minimized by losing only three points to Dixon heading into Sonoma.

“That’s a nice way of putting it,” he said. “It was a terrible day.”

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Should NASCAR come to Portland? Short answer: No

With a large crowd of enthusiastic race fans in Oregon for today’s Portland Grand Prix — the first major-league race in the Pacific Northwest in over a decade — some of you have been asking a great question: Should NASCAR race at Portland as well?

I’m admittedly biased because I live in Portland. And obviously, I have a heavy interest in NASCAR since that’s where I spend most of my time. So you might think I’d be waving my arms and saying, “HEY NASCAR! CHECK THIS PLACE OUT!”

But actually, I don’t think it would be a good idea for NASCAR to visit Portland International Raceway.

The track itself could probably put on a good show. It’s very short for a road course (1.96 miles) and has two long straightaways, which would favor NASCAR-style racing.

But the facility would have to get some major upgrades to meet the typical NASCAR standards.

There are no garages at Portland. Lower series like Xfinity and Trucks occasionally work from behind their haulers or under awnings, but Cup never does.

But I don’t even think Portland would be great for a Truck race (even though the series previously raced here).

Pit road, from what I can tell, isn’t long enough for a full NASCAR field and doesn’t have much room to expand. The safety setup — concrete walls, short runoff areas and low fences — look like a track which last hosted a major race more than a decade ago (which is actually the case here). And there’s hardly any on-site parking for fans — not to mention a lack of permanent bathroom/concessions structures.

The track is run by the City of Portland’s parks department, and it’s basically like racing through a nature preserve. It’s beautiful. And the asphalt surface itself is in fantastic shape.

But there’s just not a lot of the infrastructure NASCAR officials, teams, fans and media are accustomed to.

It works better for IndyCar, which races at several street circuits and has more experience showing up to places and setting up what they need to put on a successful race (hospitality chalets, race control, etc.).

That said, this event is shaping up to be a mega hit for IndyCar, so it’s understandable if NASCAR would want to race at an established circuit like Portland. But more of an investment would be required before that happens.

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Season of Rossi: Can Alexander cap roller-coaster campaign with title?

As an unexpectedly large crowd lined up for Friday’s IndyCar autograph session at Portland International Raceway, one of the first people in line to get Alexander Rossi’s signature was a young boy wearing NAPA gear.

It’s something Rossi has noticed more lately now that he’s frequently been in the spotlight — for various reasons.

“It’s been very cool for me to see from Year 1 until now — almost the end of Year 3 — the amount of people wearing my shirts and hats and wanting to talk to me at autograph sessions,” he said. “That’s really increased. So that’s a huge positive and something I’m happy about and something I hope will continue to grow as the years go on.”

If you’re a fan of Rossi, it’s more likely to be based off his racing style than his personality. That’s not to say he lacks in the personality department; heck, he competed on a reality TV show and co-hosts a podcast, so that’s clearly not the case.

But the self-described introvert does most of his talking on the track, where his no-apologies driving style, balls-out racing ability and eye-opening talent have made people sit up and pay attention more than ever this season.

Rossi’s moves can be controversial at times — depending on your view — but you can’t accuse him of settling for anything.

“He’s definitely gone after it and been aggressive and raced to win a championship,” Will Power said. “That’s what you’ve got to do.”

Winning the 100th running of the Indy 500 two years ago was a major accomplishment. But given it happened nearly right away in his IndyCar career and he was a virtual unknown to many American race fans at the time, it wasn’t something that launched him into stardom by itself.

But now, having found his rhythm with three victories in 2018 — after winning twice in his first two years combined — Rossi is on track to becoming one of IndyCar’s biggest stars.

“I love this championship and everything it represents,” he said after arriving in Portland for Sunday’s race here. “I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to be here. I wouldn’t want to have it any other way.”

It wasn’t always that way, because IndyCar was never the goal for Rossi. He chased Formula One dreams and ultimately made starts in five F1 races. But his home ultimately became IndyCar after getting an opportunity with Andretti Autosport.

These days, he’s hoping to be the next American who could carry the banner as a champion in the United States’ biggest open-wheel series — one year after Josef Newgarden did the same.

“I think it’s massive for the series (to have an American champion),” Rossi said. “(As) Americans, it’s hard to cheer for the French guy or an Australian guy. As much as we love them and respect them and admire what they do, Americans are patriotic people, right?

“Americans winning is a great thing for a growing fan base and hopefully inspires more young American racing drivers and go-karters. It’s a cool thing to be able to represent the U.S. in a U.S. series at U.S. tracks.”

If he pulls it off, he’ll have completed an impressive comeback. After the Toronto race on July 15, Rossi was third in the point standings — 70 points behind four-time champion Scott Dixon.

Three podium finishes later (two wins and a runnerup finish last week at Gateway), Rossi is down by just 26 points with two races to go.

Oh, and the season finale at Sonoma? It’s a double points race.

“Scott has been a model of consistency, as he always is, and he’s won a bunch of races nevertheless,” Sebastien Bourdais said. “Alex has been so flamboyant and just hitting it hard out of the gate that I think if it comes down to a dogfight at the end, he might have the edge. But we’ll see.”