Former Champ Car, IMSA exec takes mind-boggling logistics in stride, fascinated that ‘improvement in technology is quite massive’
. And he jokes that he’s “the token American” in the midst of this European-centric pioneering movement that’s designed simultaneously to showcase the benefits of sustainable electrification in motorsports and to raise awareness about how reducing our carbon footprint can have a positive effect on climate change.“It's an amazing experience. Just our team at the FIA, we've got people from Spain, Poland, France, Germany.
This current turn in his career has led him to discover that he indeed can serve in on-track leadership in two wildly different types of series with the same mission. And it has enlightened him about certain ironies. “No, not here. It's quite the opposite,” he said. “And that's funny – it’s a little bit of a dichotomy, because we're very, very high tech in everything we do. Even in race control and the cars and the charging systems and everything we do. But then when you think about the communication between the team and the driver, it's pretty old-school.
“Some of them are naturally good at it, but a lot of them, I think, have to learn how to drive the car,” he said. “Everybody has the loop simulators. And these guys spend so much time in the simulators because of the way our weekend is so compressed.” Practice, qualifying, and racing all take place in one day, with the main event lasting only about 45 minutes.
He said at Portland, “we've gone in and kind of changed the first turn—they call it the festival turn—which is the big chicane at the beginning. We've kind of changed that a little bit to make it not so fast and make it more of a passing zone and put a couple of changes in there. We've still got an attack zone, even though it's a permanent race circuit. So we try to tweak things, try to make things a little bit different, try to make it match formula E.
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