What a Whirlwind Week Continued

So I will pick up the story of my crazy week early on Thursday morning.

I was up before my alarm because I was in the racecar testing. I got out to the track, the weather looked good, a bit windy, but still sunny and warm. I met my mechanics and engineer in person for the first time (even though I had spent hours on the phone with them :)). We then started testing and made a lot of progress with the car. My DexCom Seven Plus worked perfectly and so I kept my glucose levels within range all day. I spent an hour after we had finished running debriefing and talking through the changes we hope to get through when we test again on Sunday and Monday.

Then it was time to teach teenagers car control, weight transfer, grip and braking thresholds. This turned out to be a lot more fun than I had expected. We had 8 ‘students’ with three instructors (myself, Chris Festa and my team manager Kane Williams). We taught them in their own cars so that they would be comfortable on the road. There were all different types of cars from a Honda Fit to a Toyota Tacoma to a Ford Expedition. The Expedition was soooo big it made the car control exercise very interesting. And the braking exercise. And the emergency lane change exercise! It was actually very impressive seeing the kids learn and get comfortable with their cars. There were some guys who were ok with everything to start and there were a couple girls that very obviously weren’t comfortable to start the evening, but by the end were having a blast. By the end of the evening, though I was falling on my face! I had gotten up at 6:30 to get to the track, done 150 miles in the Indy Lights car, and then stayed until nearly 11:00 at night teaching. When I fell into bed, I was asleep straight away. On Friday I spent the whole day catching up on emails, making calls and getting hotels ready for the first race next weekend.

Here is a photo from the testing on Thursday.

The rest are here on my Flickr.

I am in the car again tomorrow for a few more miles, and then again on Monday at Sebring for the final preparation before the first race, the Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg next weekend.