Before even turning a wheel, JR Hildebrand was an interesting contender for “Sports Comeback of the Year.” He strengthened his case by pacing the IndyCar Series’ only preseason open test in his Ed Carpenter Racing Chevrolet.
Hildebrand ran a lap timed at 19.0401 seconds (193.234 mph) at Phoenix International Raceway, unofficially dipping under the track record established by Helio Castroneves last April. ECR team owner Carpenter was right alongside him, running 192.404 mph to place second among the 21 entries.
Hildebrand is returning to full-time IndyCar competition after being dropped by Panther Racing midway through the 2013 season. His first full-time stint in the sport lasted 37 races and produced five top-five finishes, but was made infamous by a last-lap crash in the 2011 Indianapolis 500 that handed the victory to Dan Wheldon.
After Hildebrand crashed again at Indianapolis in 2013, finishing 33rd and last, Panther showed him the door. There was plenty of sympathy for him at the time, because Panther was a team past its prime; it hadn’t won a race since 2005, and team boss John Barnes subsequently ceased operations at the end of the season.
Editor’s Picks
J.R. Hildebrand geared up for full-time comeback
xxxx
xxxx
Carpenter, the only owner-driver in the IndyCar Series, hired Hildebrand in 2014 to drive an additional ECR entry at the Indianapolis 500, and he has finished in the top 10 in each of the past three years. Last summer, when ECR’s lead driver Josef Newgarden suffered a broken clavicle in a race at Texas Motor Speedway, Hildebrand subbed in a scheduled test at Iowa Speedway and helped set up the car that Newgarden used to dominate the race at Iowa a couple of weeks later.
So in Hildebrand, Carpenter is getting a 29-year-old American driver with extensive engineering knowledge who has just 44 IndyCar starts under his belt, yet has already experienced the less pleasant aspects of the sport.
Hildebrand is too nice to have a chip on his shoulder, but it’s obvious he’s extra motivated by his past experiences.
“It’s just nice to finally be able to give him an opportunity to be back full-time IndyCar racing,” Carpenter said. “We’ve worked together the past three years at Indy, and obviously, JR helped us a lot more last year with some testing.
“Even though he hasn’t been in the car as much as we wanted, he was still kind of in tune with what we were doing all the time, communicating with myself, Josef, the engineers. So it’s not your typical like new driver coming into a team. He’s pretty familiar with how we operate, and with most of the key people.”
That comfort and familiarity was apparent at Phoenix, where ECR had the additional advantage of having participated in a Firestone tire test in the fall at the one-mile oval. But Hildebrand isn’t the only new face within the Carpenter ranks, with engineers Dan Hobbs and Justin Taylor taking over for Jeremy Milless, who moved to Andretti Autosport.
“That’s really where the biggest change is at — getting those relationships built and familiarity with the car and driver,” Carpenter said. “We felt pretty good about where we were as a team coming in here, which I think is good for JR, too, to make that transition back to full-time guy a little easier. Chevy does have a good package here, and we’re thankful for that. Hopefully, we can keep it rolling.
“We still have the same goals of competing for race wins, competing for the championship, for Indy 500, and this [Phoenix] is an important race. It’s the first oval of the year. You want to come and sort of set the tone for the ovals here, just as St. Petersburg is important to kick off the season and set the tone for the road and street courses.”
Newgarden set a high bar for Hildebrand, winning three races over the past two years for ECR to establish himself as an IndyCar star and earning a drive at Team Penske.
But Hildebrand compiled a similarly impressive record in the lower ranks (both drivers won the Indy Lights championship), and now that he has landed with a more competitive team on a full-time basis, he has the opportunity to make the same kind of mark.
Questions about whether ECR’s success over the past few years was down to Newgarden or the team should be answered fairly quickly.
“We’ve got some challenges ahead of us to be totally prepped and on the same page and ready to rock and roll when it starts to really matter,” Hildebrand said. “But that’s what tests like this are great for. I had every confidence getting in the car first session that we were going to start in the window. It’s just about all of us together being smart about how we approach it, and for me, it’s an awesome sort of little change of pace to be back at it full time.”
When Newgarden was injured, Hildebrand also drove in a test on the Road America road course, and he said he feels fortunate he has logged recent track time in the latest Chevrolet on short ovals, superspeedways and road courses to help ease his comeback.
Driving a car that Newgarden often proved was capable of running up front or winning races also made a big difference.
“I tested at places where you’re doing something fairly different, and so for me to have that added familiarity, particularly when Josef was somebody who clearly had been finding what he was looking for, knew what he was looking for and was making good on that on the track, that was really valuable for me,” he said. “Coming into this year I have a little bit more of a sense of what’s fast, what’s not, and what do I need for the car to be able to do. I’ve started that process ahead of time.”
Out of a full-time job the past few years, Hildebrand was selective about how he spent his time. Instead of rushing off to try to find a drive in sports car racing, he accepted his part-time role with ECR while working with high school students to encourage their participation in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education programs. He has also been active in the research and development of autonomous vehicles.
His story is certainly not typical for an out-of-work driver, and it seems to be paying dividends.
“I think you could make a case at least for coming in sort of fresh, that there are some advantages to that,” he said. “I don’t have any preconceived ideas about what’s going to happen or how the car is going to feel, necessarily.
“But yeah, I’d be lying to you if I said it didn’t feel good going out and putting a couple of laps down and doing it to where we felt they were legit,” he added with a smile. “We’re not just out there toying around. It felt good.”
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
