I have tried to sit down several times in the past week, to corral my thoughts into something resembling coherence in a sequence that makes some sort of chronological sense following this year’s Indy 500. Having failed at that multiple times, I eventually decided to go for something a little different for the blog this time – splitting it into 3 different sections that define my month of May this year…

The Good.

From the moment the #GetInvolved campaign launched, it was amazing to see the involvement from all of you via social media, and the interaction we were able to generate. Turning the cockpit pink was incredibly special to me, and from the emails and notes I have received, I believe it was something special to many of you too. We’ve already recounted the numbers of the campaign as news, so I don’t want to do that again in this space, but what I do want to do, is to thank you all again, in writing, from me personally. To everyone who contributed, to everyone who shared on social media, all of you made a massive difference, and going into the race itself with the worry about whether we would meet the goal or not lifted from my shoulders was a massive relief.

And we not only made our goal, we smashed it. You guys killed it. Thank you.

Also under the section of “The Good” I feel like I need to talk a bit more about how good our primary car was. From the moment we unloaded the pink Dale Coyne Racing car supporting Susan G. Komen from the trailer, she was on the pace, and we were able to find her handling window in clean air, and in traffic. She felt great behind a few cars, and I was looking for the big pack in testing to try and get more experience of that, when it all went wrong on Wednesday nearly three weeks ago. Which of course brings me to the bad…

The Bad.

Let’s be honest. Nobody likes crashing race cars, but sometimes it happens. Sometimes it happens when it shouldn’t. With hindsight, video, and some data, I can now tell you almost exactly what happened to me that Wednesday, but it doesn’t make it any easier to live with.

As I was approaching turn 3 the big pack was in turn 3, and checked up. Then between turns 3 and 4 it looked as though they went. This is normal big pack behavior. I had checked up enough on the run into 3 so as not to get to close, because, and you may notice the irony here, I didn’t want to get caught out. With a gap between them and I, as I entered the short chute between turns 3 and 4 I was unsighted to what was happening at the exit of turn 4.

I got onto the power believing the pack was accelerating onto the front straight. The only car visible to me at this time was Marco. Almost immediately as I accelerated, I realized he wasn’t, but it was already too late.

I have seen people on social media want to throw blame at Marco for what happened, but it was absolutely not his fault. In the same position, with the big pack checking up in front of me, with no grip due to all the dirty air, I would have done the exact same thing he did. When you don’t know what they are doing in front of you, you want a little space to keep an eye on them (This was the same reason I didn’t get too close going into turn 3).

I headed for the grey on the outside, and with brakes, and steering corrections, it looked like I was going to hit the outside wall and crumple that suspension some. As I got more and more speed knocked off I started to be hopeful I would just white wall it. Then all of a sudden the car pitched left. At the time I had no idea why, and it happened so fast I didn’t have a chance of saving it. The data says it was a bump on the exit of 4, and given I was on a different line, running so much slower now that my aero was no longer working, and in a car set up to turn left… Well, you know what happened next.

Did I know I was going to hit the pit attenuator? Yes. That sideways slide after the first brush with the wall felt like it went on for years. I’ve seen cars spin off 4 before, and cringed as they headed that direction. I’ve always said I never wanted to find out what that one felt like. In case you’re wondering, it’s certainly not something I recommend…

The Ugly.

So I killed a race car. Our team spare tub was not in the garage area when I killed our race car. She was waiting to be repaired for prior damage. Not only did I see the massive amount of work I had just given my already over-worked crew, I also saw the possibility of not even getting the chance to qualify for this year’s Indianapolis 500 flash before my eyes. I’ve been quoted as saying I wanted to crawl into a hole. It’s true, I did.

Something that doesn’t fit into this section is how incredible my crew were. Rebuilding a tub from scratch, getting me back into the race car for a shake down before qualifying, and then being good enough in qualifying to not have to take part in the last row shoot out. Just an amazing amount of work, awesome dedication, and a massive amount of sheer determination on their part. I’m not sure I will ever have the appropriate words to thank those guys enough for the work they did.

But unfortunately, if we’re assigning race cars personalities, this one knew I crashed her friend. Although my first laps back were up in the 224mph range, they were some of the least comfortable laps at those speeds on brand new tires, that I have ever driven at IMS. But maybe it was just me – maybe it was in my head. After all I had just smashed myself, and my previous race car into a wall in a serious fashion. And in those first laps it didn’t seem such a big deal. If it was me, I would fix it. If it was the car, we would fix it. That’s what you do with race cars, it’s part and parcel of what we as a team.

From a practical, engineering standpoint, if we knew what was upsetting our car, we would have found it, and put it right before the race. We chased through the brief laps on Saturday before the rain. We chased on Sunday during qualifying. We chased on Monday during that session. The boys when through the car again with a fine tooth comb. We chased on Carb Day and through we had made progress…

On Race Day morning I thought I had a race car. Avoiding the turn 1 mess required massive evasive action, and some luck, but I managed it, and I wasn’t that bothered by having to now restart at the back. It’s a long race, and with a good car, there is plenty of time to pass people and come to the front. As we went green I was sizing up the cars in front of me, most notably watching out had handling issues. Sure my car wasn’t as good as I had hoped, but I had tools.

After around 10 laps under green I was out of tools, and no longer worrying about trying to pass someone, but just trying to stay in the tow. By 15 laps in, I was dropped from the tow, and just hanging on, and counting down the laps to the next pit stop. And that, repeated by every stint, was kind of the story of my day. We chased. We tried everything we could think of and adjust during the race. Just as we started to get a little better, there was the incident on pit lane. While I know there was nowhere I could go, it’s still just awful when you know someone was hurt, and your car was involved. We also picked up damage on the left front that then compounded the handling issues we had. You know how I mentioned earlier it’s a long race? When you have a day like we had, it’s not just a long race. It’s the never-ending race. And you’re just begging for the white flag and checkered flag to fly.

When you spend an entire year working to run this one race, and then you have a day like that in the race car, it’s mentally and emotionally draining. My physical injuries from the crash the previous Wednesday I can live with much more easily, but the mental and emotional exhaustion after that race took me days to pull myself out of. I try to be a positive person, and live my life by that mantra, but I’m also a human just like everyone else, and some days it’s just hard.

So What’s Next?

As most of you reading this blog have probably worked out by now, I am heart-broken by how our race went this May. However I would have been even more heart-broken had I had to watch that race from the stands, and it’s time for me to pull my big girl pants on, and remember how lucky I was to be in a race car. I am also able to take solace from how well the campaign went, and the work we were able to do off the track this May, and that was largely down to all of you, so thank you again.

I’m currently working with PitFit Training to get my right side back to a happy place. My foot, ankle and knee are still pretty banged up, but I am getting better every day. The race track rheumatism limp will soon be banished! As for my ribs,I can now go around corners in my road car without them hurting, and believe it or not that’s massive progress from where I was even one week ago, so I’m confident they’re healing too.

Which leads me to what’s next for me as a racing driver. When do I get to get in a race car again? On Friday night I ran a social media Q&A, and this came up a lot. At time of writing this, I genuinely don’t know. Right now the opportunities that may or may not fall my way are out of my control. I feel the chances of me having those opportunities may have been diminished by how much we struggled the second half of this month of May. The only thing I can do to help myself is to keep working, keep pushing, and try to stay positive.

It’s time to focus forwards.