At the start of 2013, I was going through a tough time. I was 18 months out of an IndyCar, the sponsor who I thought would back my return had just pulled out, and my confidence was through the floor. It was a time when I came as close to “out” as I have ever been.

Yet as we approached May, there was one team who listened to my story, and who were prepared to take a chance on me. They were originally planning to have a spare car ready for their two drivers, but instead they stretched their resources, and allowed that to become the car for me. They banded together, set me back on my feet, put a steering wheel back in my hands, and took a pretty big risk with their program that year to give me an opportunity.

The team was Dale Coyne Racing. I’ve been with them ever since.

Three years later, in 2016 at the 100th Running of the Indianapolis 500, Bryan Clauson joined the team.

Bryan, much like me in 2013, was coming to the team from a rough run. While he was still winning, and excelling in his home territory on dirt, his previous Indy 500 in 2015 had proved to be a tough, confidence-knocking month.

Just as they did for me three years prior, Dale Coyne Racing stretched their resources, used their spare chassis to expand to a fourth car, and gave Bryan the opportunity to come back to IndyCar in an environment where the team would be standing beside him. Bryan even had the same engineer Dale had paired me with for my first time with the team.

Racing drivers can be notoriously selfish, and a few years previously I’m not sure I would have been the kind of person who would have bothered to connect with her new teammate, or been the kind of person who Bryan would end up calling a friend. But the nurturing environment of Dale Coyne Racing that had helped me regain my morale had rubbed off on me. I found myself actively wanting to pay it forwards by setting out to be the best teammate I thought I could be.

Over the course of the 2016 Indianapolis 500 Bryan and I became friends. We respected each other’s opinions in the engineering room, and as the two one-off drivers on the team, we found ourselves facing similar challenges with our cars in the aero-kit era, and working together with our engineers to try and solve them as a team. We practiced together, used each other to get comfortable running in the dirty air, and on race day we spent nearly the entire event tied together with a piece of string, racing each other throughout the day as we climbed our way through the field. We were even already talking about getting to do it again in 2017…

Shortly after the race, I made good on my promise to Bryan that I would come cheer him on at a dirt race, and that was when I discovered that his regular sprint car and midget number for most races was the #63. Watching him get to rack up another W that night is one of my favorite memories. I told him the next time I would come and watch him, it would be at his “house” in Kokomo, and I was planning to show up at that event at the end of the summer fully decked out in Bryan gear…

I did go to Kokomo at the end of the summer.

I purchased a Bryan T-shirt.

But I wasn’t there to watch my friend race.

I was there for his memorial.

* * * * *

Even now, I find this story incredibly hard to write. I did not grow up in an era where I expected to lose colleagues, friends, teammates in my lifetime as a racing driver. We all know it’s something that can happen, and so it has been proved cruelly again, and again. But when it happens it’s a hammer blow, and when it happens again, it’s a compounding blow striking in the very same place again.

At Bryan’s memorial at Kokomo raceway I struggled to be brave. I was not one of Bryan’s family, I was not one of his oldest friends or one of his closest friends, so I sat at the back of the stands with the fans, and tried not to cry. I like to think I did a sort-of-reasonable job of attempting to hold it altogether, but then, Tim, Bryan’s dad, found me. And as he hugged me and thanked me for coming, and told me that Bryan would be so pleased I came. That’s when the tears really came.

* * * * *

With the permission and support of Bryan’s parents, last year my helmet started carrying a grasshopper. Grasshoppers appeared to so many of us after Bryan’s passing that his mum, Diane, looked up the meaning. Apparently it means we have to keep moving forwards, not sideways, not looking backwards, just forwards – even forwards is the hardest direction to take. I also carry the words “Forever Chasing 200” with me to represent the goal of 200 races that Bryan was chasing in the year that he died. While the dirt racing world helped him achieve that goal within weeks, and I’m not sure I’ll ever get to run enough races to even make a dent, it still feels special to me to carry that forwards.

I finally took the step of registering as an organ donor myself. I had been considering it for 12 months, but somehow to me this was still something other people did – people who were better human beings than me. My family and I had never been touched by this issue while I was growing up, so it was something I had never really thought about or discussed. In the fall of 2016, I spoke to my husband, and we both made sure our donation decisions were registered online.

In 2017, I was announced as one of the Driver Ambassadors for the Driven2SaveLives campaign, one of the spokespeople to help carry forwards this campaign, and in May of 2017 at the 101st Indianapolis 500, we shared our suite at the Speedway with the Indiana Donor Network and Bryan’s family.

I was up there after my qualifying run on Sunday when Tim pulled me to one side and told me there was somebody he wanted me to meet.

“Somebody” was Dan Alexander, the recipient of Bryan’s heart. Bryan’s heart was standing in front of me, giving the gift of life to Dan, continuing to beat.

I’m afraid I don’t have the words to tell you what that moment meant to me.

* * * * *

This May, I am trading in the colors you have become accustomed to seeing me race in the past few years for another cause close to my heart. I am honored to have been asked to drive the Donate Life car in the 102nd Indianapolis 500, and to be named a spokesperson for Donate Life Indiana. Our campaign has a mission to try and reach more Hoosiers than ever before, and help raise awareness among teenagers to make their donation decisions when getting their driving licenses for the first time. I am proud to have the opportunity to be part of this campaign, and I’m humbled that the Clausons wish for me to continue to share, and tell Bryan’s story.

Through Bryan’s donation decision, he chose to be a hero. At a time of tragedy, he gave other families hope, and through his decision to donate life, he saved 5 lives.

Through the education of teens and students about organ donation and transplantation we hope to help save many more.

Taylor, Bryan’s sister, tells me he would be smiling right now. It makes me smile to think that she might be right.

To find out more about organ, eye and tissue donation and transplantation, please visit www.donatelife.net