Bell’s best shot 1 of 5 great hopes for Andretti Autosport in Indy 500

By May 29, 2016, 6:29 AM EDT
Photo: IndyCar
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INDIANAPOLIS – The Andretti Autosport of 2016 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is a welcome throwback to the Andretti Autosport of 2012, 2013 and 2014, rather than the imposters of 2015 that were languishing midpack without any chance of winning.

And the best part for the team is that any of its five drivers has a realistic shot at winning.

Ryan Hunter-Reay starts third in search of his second Indianapolis 500 in the No. 28 DHL Honda, while any of his other four teammates would become a first-time winner.

In fourth is NBCSN IndyCar analyst Townsend Bell, having had arguably his best month to date in the No. 29 California Pizza Kitchen/Robert Graham Honda.

Carlos Munoz, the sneaky good Colombian who has always done well at Indianapolis, starts fifth in the No. 26 United Fiber & Data Honda.

Then Alexander Rossi has had a damn impressive first month of May in the No. 98 NAPA Auto Parts/CURB Records Honda and will start 11th, best of five rookies in the field.

And last but certainly not least, Marco Andretti is hoping this will finally be his year in the No. 27 Snapple Honda from 14th on the grid.

The four race veterans here have all been good – Hunter-Reay may be the only winner in the group but each of the other three has been regular top-five contenders over the years.

Bell’s ascendance and quick acclimation to the team, with engineer Craig Hampson as an asset and with a great crew, has been a welcome story line to monitor this month.

“I’m so used to doing the interviews and saying ‘Hell, I’ll try to pick off where I can and work into top five.’ But now we’re starting here,” Bell told NBC Sports.

“We’ve started up front before (fourth in 2011). It’s nice to have clean air and good visibility. I’ll have a chance to lead this thing early on. It’ll be fun to put it all together on race day.”

Although Bell’s deal for the Indianapolis 500 came together fairly late, he’s gelled quickly.

“Yeah (a month like this) was I what hoping for, but I’m not sure I expected it,” he said. “I wasn’t surprised when we achieved it knowing how strong their winning pedigree is in the sport. I’m as happy for team and Honda as myself. I know how they hard to work with.

“And working with Craig has been terrific. He is one of the winningest race engineers in our sport. He’s totally passionate about extracting the maximum performance we can. I’ll miss him on Monday!”

Munoz is that driver that you don’t realize can win it but you probably would be stupid to overlook.

The 24-year-old finished a famous second on debut in 2013 and followed it up with fourth in 2014. Poised for another top-five last year, he fell back late owing to a late splash and dash for fuel.

Why does he think he’s so good here? Munoz instead said it’s the people that prepare his car.

“I get that question a lot,” he admitted. “I think with the team, the car, our team of Andretti has been so good and strong here at Indy.

“You can see it with whatever driver in fifth car here, goes quick. I’m not taking my own credit. They have something special here in ovals. Here, Pocono, I feel really comfortable.

“We’ve had four different drivers in the fifth car, the last four years. And I’ve learned from all of them. It could be the way they race, or the way they time their passing. Something you have to learn from all the drivers.”

It was easy to forget given what happened at Pocono last fall but Hunter-Reay did win the series’ most recent 500-mile race there, last August.

Marco Andretti himself has but one goal on Sunday: end that damn winless streak for the family driving here, that’s lingered since Mario’s first and only win in 1969 (see Bell and Mario Andretti flipping pizzas, here).

“I’ve had a lot of great shots here. I’m pretty confident with the race car,” he said.

“We’ve had hell of a week. There’s a lot gone wrong. But I’m still smiling with that quiet confidence.

“I’d much rather start 33rd with a good car, than start on pole without one.”

An Andretti Autosport win on Sunday would follow the form from a magical month of May that has seen the team win – or score big – quite a bit.

Tanner Foust swept the two Red Bull Global Rallycross races in Phoenix for Volkswagen Andretti Rallycross.

The Amlin Andretti Formula E squad bagged a double points finish in the most recent FIA Formula E Championship race with Robin Frijns and Simona de Silvestro, its first of the season.

And on Friday, Dean Stoneman entered the IMS record books with a win by just 0.0024 of a second over Ed Jones in the Indy Lights Presented by Cooper Tires’ Freedom 100. It marked the closest finish in track history. For good measure, Stoneman’s teammates Dalton Kellett and Shelby Blackstock were a season-best third and fourth.

An Andretti Autosport win on Sunday would be its fifth in the Indianapolis 500, with the other three Jacques Villeneuve (1995), Dan Wheldon (2005), Dario Franchitti (2007) and Hunter-Reay (2014). Villeneuve’s was as Forsythe/Green Racing, which later morphed into Andretti Green Racing, which later became Andretti Autosport.

Heart of Racing program aims to elevate new generation of women to star in sports cars

By Mar 29, 2023, 12:00 PM EDT
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Mike Levitt/LAT Images/Heart of Racing
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(Editor’s note: This story on the Heart of Racing sports cars shootout for women is one in an occasional Motorsports Talk series focusing on women in racing during March, which is Women’s History Month.)

Heart of Racing driver and team manager Ian James says his daughter, Gabby, isn’t so interested in auto racing. But she is interested (as a New York-based journalist) in writing about the sport’s efforts and growth in gender equality

It’s a topic that also was brought up by James’ wife, Kim.

“They’re always saying, ‘Hey, you manage all these guys, and you help them, so why not a woman?’ ” Ian James told NBC Sports. “And I feel like there are a lot of women that haven’t had a fair crack at it in sports car racing.

“Our whole DNA at Heart of Racing is we give people opportunities in all types of situations where there’s been crew personnel or drivers. And I felt like we hadn’t really addressed the female driver situation. I felt like there was a void to give somebody a chance to really prove themselves.”

During the offseason, the team took a major step toward remedying that.

Hannah Grisham at the Heart of Racing shootout (Mike Levitt/LAT)

Heart of Racing held its first female driver shootout last November at the APEX Motor Club in Phoenix, Arizona, to select two women who will co-drive an Aston Martin Vantage GT4 in the SRO SprintX Championship.

The season will begin this weekend at Sonoma Raceway with Hannah Grisham and Rianna O’Meara-Hunt behind the wheel. The team also picked a third driver, 17-year-old Annie Rhule, for a 2023 testing program.

The Phoenix audition included 10 finalists who were selected from 130 applicants to the program, which has been fully underwritten by Heart of Racing’s sponsors.

“We didn’t want it to be someone who just comes from a socio-economic background that could afford to do it on their own course,” James said. “We can pick on pure talent. We’re committed to three years to do this and see if we can find the right person. I’m very hopeful.”

So is Grisham, a Southern California native who has been racing since she was 6 in go-karts and since has won championships in Mazda and Miata ladder series. She has several victories in the World Racing League GP2 (an amateur sports car endurance series). The last two years, Grisham has worked as a test driver for the Pirelli tire company (she lives near Pirelli’s U.S. headquarters in Rome, Georgia, and tests about 30 times a year).

Starting with the Sonoma during SprintX event weekends (which feature races Saturday and Sunday), she will split the Heart of Racing car with O’Meara-Hunt (a New Zealand native she got to know at the shootout).

“It’s huge; the biggest opportunity I’ve had in this sport,” Grisham, 23, told NBC Sports. “Now it’s up to me to perform how I know I can. But I’m super lucky to be with such an amazing team and have a good teammate. The Heart of Racing has a family vibe and energy to it that’s really amazing. It’s super exciting. It’s hard to put into words.”

Grisham is hopeful that a strong performance eventually could lead to a full-time ride with Heart of Racing. The team has full-time entries in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship and won the GTD category of the 2023 Rolex 24 at Daytona with the No. 27 Aston Martin Vantage GT3 piloted by James, Darren Turner, Roman DeAngelis and Marco Sorensen.

James said “there’s no guarantee” of placement in an IMSA entry for Grisham and O’Meara-Hunt, but “if they prove themselves, we’ll continue to help them throughout their career and our team. The GT3 program is an obvious home for that. If they get the opportunity and don’t quite make it, we’ll be looking for the next two. The next three years, we’ll cycle through drivers until we find the right one.”

Grisham described the two-day shootout as a friendly but intense environment. After a day of getting acclimated to their cars, drivers qualified on new tires the second day and then did two 25-minute stints to simulate a race.

Hannah Grisham reviews data with Heart of Racing sports car driver Gray Newell during the team’s shootout last November (Mike Levitt/LAT).

“Everyone was super nice,” she said. “Once everyone gets in the car, it’s a different level. A different switch gets turned on. Everyone was super nice; everyone was quick. I feel we had an adequate amount of seat time, which is definitely helpful.

“It’s always cool to meet more women in the sport because there’s not too many of us, even though there’s more and more. It’s always cool to meet really talented women, especially there were so many from all over the world.”

IMSA has celebrated female champions and race winners, notably Katherine Legge (who is running GTD full time this season with Sheena Monk for Gradient Racing). The field at Sebring and Daytona also included the Iron Dames Lamborghini (a female-dominated team).

The Heart of Racing’s female driver shootout drew interested candidates from around the world (Mike Levitt/LAT).

James believes “a breakout female driver will be competing with the best of them” in the next five years as gender barriers slowly recede in motorsports.

“It’s been a male-dominated sport,” James said. “It’s still a very minute number of women drivers compared to the guys. I’m sure back in the day there were physical hurdles about it that were judged. But now the cars are not very physical to drive, and it’s more about technique and mental strength and stuff like that, and there’s no reason a girl shouldn’t do just as well as a guy. What we’re just trying to achieve is that there isn’t an obvious barrier to saying ‘Hey, I can’t hire a guy or a girl.’ We just want to put girls in front of people and our own program that are legitimate choices going forward for people.”

“There’s been some really good female drivers, but a lot of them just haven’t been able to sustain it, and a lot of that comes from sponsorship. I think (with the shootout), there’s no pressure of raising money and worrying about crash damage. We’ve taken care of all that so they can really focus on the job at hand.”

Funding always has been a hurdle for Grisham, who caught the racing bug from her father, Tom, an off-road driver who raced the Baja 1000 several times.

“I don’t come from a lot of money by any means,” she said. “So since a young age, I’ve always had to find sponsorships and get people to help me, whether it was buying tires, paying for entry fees, paying for the shipment of a car to an actual race. Literally knocking on the doors of people or businesses in my town.

“So yeah, it’s definitely something I’ve always struggled with and held me back because the sport revolves so much around money. So again to get this opportunity is insane.”

Rianna O’Meara-Hunt was one of two women selected by the Heart of Racing to drive in the SRO SprintX Championship this year (Mike Levitt/LAT).

Grisham credits racing pioneer Lyn St. James (an Indy 500 veteran and sports car champion) as a role model who has helped propel her career. She was hooked by the sights, smells and sounds of racing but also its competitive fire.

“There’s a zone you get in, that subconscious state of mind when you’re driving. It’s like addictive almost. I love it. Also I’m just a very competitive person as I think most race car drivers are.

“For sure I want to stay with the Heart of Racing. Obviously, I’m still getting to know everyone, but it’s a super family vibe. That’s how I grew up in the sport with just my dad and I wrenching on the cars. That’s what I love about this sport is all the amazing people you meet. And I think this is one of the most promising teams in this country. For sure, I want to learn as much as I can from them and hopefully continue. I feel so lucky and grateful to be one of those chosen.”