Got a invitation to ride with IRL driver Davey Hamilton in a two seater Indy Experience car at Infineon so it was hard to pass up.
The seats were molded into the chassis and you were pretty much sitting on the floor with your legs extended into padded leg tunnels. After I was strapped in the crew put the top body panel on which also serves as a side to side neck halo.
I was told the car was approx. 1600 lbs with 700HP, acceleration as you might expect from this kind of power to weight is incredible. I was expecting massive G's going into and out a turn but to be honest it doesn't seem that much faster than our cars in a turn.
What I do notice is after a turn how fast you can get to full power which seems instantaneous. We were coming out of the Infineon carousel at 125mph and reached 165mph before Turn 7. I spoke to Davey afterwards and he said he was running at 75% because of obvious passenger concerns. It was still a fun ride, even starting from a dead stop on the exit of Turn 11 we still did a cold lap at around 1:40 sec.
Walking around the paddock as teams get ready for this weekends race, it's amazing to see how the other half lives in contrast to our modest 944-SPEC series.
We might burn up a set or two of Toyo's for the entire season and here each team has tons of wheels and new tires just for this weekend.
Of course that doesn't acccount for a full pit crew and big rig transport yet.
Firestone truck mounting all the race tires.
Danica's car getting tech'ed, She rode by me in a scooter. She looks a lot smaller in person and would be surprised if she even weighs 100lbs.
The DP cars where also here for the race weekend.
Pit row getting setup
Practice laps
This looks like a fun event to watch at Infineon this weekend and have two tickets for the Sunday race but I also have a race for our own series this weekend at Thunderhill so I gave away my tickets.
As much fun watching this race is going to be, it's more fun to be actually in a race in our own cars.