F1: Exclusive Interview With JR Hildebrand

Formula 1

F1: Exclusive Interview With JR Hildebrand

Indy Lights champion JR Hildebrand will have his first taste of F1 power when he drives a Force India machine this week...

Adam Cooper | http://www.speedtv.com | Posted November 29, 2009 Balen (BEL)

Indy Lights champion JR Hildebrand will have his first taste of F1 power when he drives a Force India machine at Jerez. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

Indy Lights champion JR Hildebrand will have his first taste of F1 power when he drives a Force India machine at Jerez on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, sharing track time with DTM star Paul di Resta. Hildebrand has already got some idea of what to expect having tried the team’s simulator – which is actually at McLaren – a few weeks ago.

JR Hildebrand competed for Team USA in the A1GP World Cup of Motorsports this season. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

Team sources told SPEEDtv.com that JR was very impressive, and was chosen to test at Jerez having outperformed GP2 racer Karun Chandhok and former Toro Rosso third driver Neel Jani, both of whom have Indian backgrounds and obvious marketing appeal. The Jerez test is exclusively for rookies, and every team is running potential future stars. Hildebrand joins BMW Sauber’s Alexander Rossi on a list packed with champions and proven race winners.

JR greatly impressed the Andretti Green team when he tested an IndyCar this summer, and he might have raced at Infineon Raceway had the more experienced Frank Montagny not got the nod. So how will the Californian fare this week? I caught up with him as he prepared to go to Spain.

Q: How did you this opportunity come about?

“I got in contact with Dr Mallya several years ago in a bit of a roundabout way. He has quite a large classic car collection in my home town of Sausalito. I sort of stumbled upon it when I was 12 or 14 years old or something like that, right when I was starting to get into racing. I ended up meeting the chap who takes care of the cars, Malcolm Page, who’s an ex-F1 guy himself. I kept in touch with him and stopped by when I was back at home. I had him on my update list so he always knew what was going on. He sort of passed the word along about the kid from the hometown who was doing OK. I met Dr Mallya briefly a couple of years back when he was in town. From there we just kept in touch and I think with this last season of mine being as successful as it was all those things coming together led me to getting a chance.”

Q: So the team just got in touch and invited you to try the simulator?

“It was a bit of a surprise, I would say. Like I said I had always kept in touch with Malcolm, and he’d been pushing for me to get involved in some way at some stage. And I basically got an email that invited me to come over and take part in a driver test of sorts, and it took off from there.”

Q: How was the simulator? It must have been like the best Playstation you’ve ever had a go on!

“There are some pretty good sims out in the States and I’ve had a go at a few of them. But this one really doesn’t compare with anything I’ve experienced in the past. It took a bit of time just to get used to it. I was having to get used to the sim and the car and the track all at once, not having any experience with any of them. By the end of the day I felt that I had improved quite a bit. To be fair my goal, obviously besides trying to improve through the day, was not to come off as the dumb American kid who doesn’t know what he’s doing! I think I effectively accomplished that goal, and had got quite a bit done by the end of the day.”

Q: Racing is all about learning and improving. Did you go away and think about and come back and have another go and do better?

“Yeah, that’s sort of how I was looking at it. Because it’s a simulator rather than real life it definitely required a slightly different approach, just because there’s a bit less at stake in terms of going off the track or crashing the car. But there’s obviously less sensory input than driving a real car as well, so it’s a bit of a compromise in terms of how you look at it. It took me a little while to come to grips with what I needed to do to try to be fast on the simulator in relation to what I might do to go fast in a real car. At the end of the day the thing that really helped me out was, having had that time to understand it, I was able to approach it much like I would driving a real race car.”

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Adam Cooper

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