Fontana, 2013. I had just hit the wall during practice. I caught one of the seams with my inside front tyre, and it just hooked to the seam, and no amount of correction I wound into the wheel would stop the car coming around. I wasn’t hurt, but the race car was in pieces, and I was devastated.

Dale had given me several opportunities over the course of 2013 and I felt like things were starting to gel. I had come into the event just starting to build a little confidence, and now I had broken that confidence into as many pieces as my car. I felt like an idiot for screwing up. I felt awful for the crew who were trying to fix her. I felt ashamed that I had made this mistake when Dale was giving me a chance. I felt like I wanted the ground to open up, and swallow me whole.

After apologizing to my crew, to my engineer, and to Dale, I went to hide in the back of the transporter. I was sitting there, staring into the middle distance, proverbially beating myself-up with the biggest stick I could find, when someone came and sat next to me.

“Yeah. I did that in practice here last year. Exactly the same thing.”

The person sitting next to me was my teammate, Justin Wilson. His words were humble, honest, and most of all, kind. He had instinctively come to find me after I left the engineering room because he could tell I was feeling like the smallest person to have ever existed. He came to find me despite the fact I was one of a cast of rotating teammates he had that season, and despite the fact that by crashing my car in practice one, I had effectively reduced our two car team back down to a one car team. It would have been easy for an experienced, race winning team leader to simply shrug their shoulders, roll their eyes, and leave their rookie teammate to stew over their mistake. Instead, he came to find me, and when he found me, he didn’t speak to me like I was stupid, or an idiot, or speak down to me. He spoke to me like I was his equal.

To me, this story sums up Justin Wilson.

To know Justin was to know his good nature, and know how kind he was. His dry humor, humility, and good attitude in even the toughest situations made him popular with everyone in the paddock. His nickname “BadAss Wilson” started as an ironic moniker, but given how good he was on track when he put the visor down, it was one of those names that stuck. Born from affection and respect, the nickname came up every time he did something truly badass on the race track, but at the same time he was cleanest guy out there. As a teammate, Justin was kind of like a unicorn – you were convinced having a teammate this much of a team player in the ever selfish world of racing was a mythical fairy tale ideology until you paired up with him. And all the while on the race track, he was out there single-handedly disproving this whole “nice guys finish last” nonsense every single time he strapped into a racing car. If you ever tried to tell him that to his face, he would probably get embarrassed, insist it wasn’t true, and change the subject.

Justin was the kind of person who took time for everyone. He had time for the fans, and for every teammate who ever raced alongside him. He worked as an advocate for children with dyslexia, proving to them they could do anything, and he made time to visit children in hospital. Whenever adversity was thrown his way, he responded with the kind of class the rest of us can only aspire to. He was probably the best human being I have ever met.

As I write this post, my heart is breaking all over again for Julia, the girls, his brother Stef, his parents. It’s breaking for all of the fans who met him, and equally for all of the fans that never had that chance. It’s breaking for everyone at Dale Coyne Racing where he spent so many seasons, and for everyone at every other team where he raced. It’s breaking for all of us who knew him, and who were fortunate enough to call him our friend.

Even in death, Justin was the kind of person who continued to set the bar higher for the rest of us. He was a registered organ donor, and he lives on through the six lives he saved when he passed away.

The benevolent badass of IndyCar, still giving back, even after he’s gone.