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What a feeling to finally come back to Long Beach. I’ve been living part time in Dana Point, about an hour from the track, for the past few years. Needless to say, I’m a big fan of Southern California.
This track is where I made my debut in Atlantics where I sat on the front row and if it weren’t for a dive bomb move from Jon Fogarty in turn 1, it would have been a very memorable day. Long story short, I went a lap down and proceeded to un-lap myself passing the entire field including the leader. It was fun and I immediately fell in love with Long Beach, the event and the track itself.
2009 was my fifth trip to LB and fourth in top-level open-wheel racing. In 2003 I raced with the American Spirit team alongside Jimmy Vasser. What a teammate! In 2004 I raced with Herdez and met who would soon be my girlfriend, Beccy Gordon. In 2005 I raced in what would be politely be termed a “learning experience” with one of the ChampCar teams. And now I’m finally back to the LBGP with one series and all the talent the IndyCar Series has on display in Southern California. I’ve been looking forward to this race since it was announced last year!
The week started out in the most unusual of places -- nearly 100 miles off the coast of San Diego on our country’s most lethal weapon in warfare, the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan. This ship costs $5 Billion to build and costs $1 Million to operate daily. I was invited on this once-in-a-lifetime two day trip by Matt Cortrell and Operation Homefront, which brings sports figures straight into our nation’s defense operations to support and boost morale amongst the troops, pilots and sailors.
Another objective of the operation is to get a positive word out on our experiences on-board the ship…and that won’t be too hard for me. Joining me on the trip were 10 other guests including my fellow IndyCar driver Graham Rahal and super-cross legend Jeremy McGrath.
I could write three pages about the trip, but I’ll just give you a brief idea of what we experienced. Seas were a huge -- 15-21 feet…the boat had a pretty good sway going. I was standing on the ship’s 1100 foot runway deck literally 15 feet away from F-18 Hornets at full throttle hooked up to the ship’s catapult system which takes them from 0-150 mph in about 1 ½ seconds. This is unlike anything I have ever experienced in my life. We stood just feet from where the F-18s land by dropping their hook to the catch cable on the flight deck… mind boggling to witness.
In the middle of the night we were perched in the “VSOdeck”, which is a small area at the very tail of the ship where the aircraft is guided in to land. All the lights are off on the ship, except for runway lights and all you can see are the F-18’s lights approaching in the distance. It seems as if they are going to land right on top of your head! They even have a slide on this deck so the personnel can just jump onto the slide and shoot to the lower level of the ship should an aircraft come in too low. Crazy! The F-18’s apply full throttle once the hook catches and I was actually blown to the ground at one point until I figured out how to shield myself from the jet’s thrust.
I fell asleep in a room directly under the launch pad where the aircraft hold the throttle wide open. It’s a 130 decibel, “teeth rattling in your head, ship rocking back and forth” kind of experience, and I loved every second of it. We capped off the trip with a departure launch off the flight deck in a Navy transport plane. I have a new found respect for our armed forces!
I returned to San Diego Naval Air Force base Wednesday evening and drove the hour north to Dana Point where I spent the night at home, albeit still swaying with imbalance from spending two days in rough seas. Thursday morning I drove to Long Beach and met with the Vision team to go over the weekend’s plans and sorting out some driver fitment issues in the car.
Despite an IndyCar being small and customized inside the cockpit, we are still fine tuning the details; remember we’ve only been working together for two weeks. At 4pm it was off to my first of many IZOD / Macy’s appearances of the season. We are kicking off the IZOD Indy line of clothing with these huge event displays at each race market. This was my home mall, so it was pretty cool to see a few IndyCars sitting on the floor of the same Macy’s I have been in many times.
Now on to the more nerve-racking experience of the week: I finally proposed to Beccy! It was just after dinner at L’Opera Restaurant in Long Beach, on our five year anniversary. I still can’t believe she has put up with me for five years! This was a race weekend so unfortunately, there was no time for a long walk on the beach at sunset or anything romantic like that.
I actually popped the question on the way back to the hotel. Easy, laid back and simple... just as we met, and just as we are. We were both happy and she didn’t need or want a big production. It was a big transition -- my mind was fixated on the race weekend ahead, especially coming off our 2nd place finish at St. Pete.
The weekend ended up being a tough one for us. Through practice and qualifying we could pop into the top ten, but it was a struggle. All weekend I was suffering from a huge snap-oversteer issue at corner exit, and trust me, in the concrete canyons of Long Beach, that makes for a long weekend.
The competition in IndyCar right now is the toughest I have ever seen. To give you an example, 1st through 20th position in the Sunday morning warm-up were covered by only one second. 20 cars in one second on a street course! What?
Like I said, it’s crazy.
Every tenth of a second is precious and we worked hard for it all weekend. We made some gains later in the weekend, but the flow of the race just didn’t go our way. In St. Pete the team made a brilliant call on our first stop, but in it just didn’t roll our way this time and we found ourselves in the back half of the field after the first round of stops.
We worked away at it and the Vision guys continued to execute fast stops.
Tire strategy worked against us as well. In St. Pete we nailed it, using the Firestone option-red tires at the very end of the race to move past Wheldon for 3rd, then Wilson for 2nd, and then we challenged Briscoe for the win. The key was that we didn’t over-heat the red tires due to all the re-starts.
At Long Beach we started on primary-blacks, 2nd stint on blacks then finished the race on reds in order to replicate St. Pete. Unfortunately the last stint in LB went green too long for us. Firestone develops and designs these option red tires to create great racing, and that they have!
The reds are designed to be very quick for a certain number of laps and then they drastically fall off.
We were really quick at the beginning of the last stint and I made an attempt to pass Matos, which he blocked, despite the rules being clear that blatant blocking is illegal.
28 laps into the tires and just two laps from the end we were P9 and my rear reds had given up. It was all-wheelspin all the time. 1st gear…2nd gear and even 3rd gear! The last two laps I did all I could do to keep the car off the wall and bring it back to the Vision boys in one piece. In the process we lost two spots to Doornbos and Tagliani.
RHR made the most of a sliding car last weekend, and persevered when things got tough. (LAT) » More Photos
We were just happy to be rolling it on the truck after the last handful of laps.
And our weekend wasn’t over until Monday. A number of IndyCar series drivers visited Honda Performance Development HQ and Honda Corporate HQ just about an hour’s drive north of Long Beach. The tour of HPD was amazing and I quickly realized why Honda makes the most high performance and reliable engines on Earth.
It was a great opportunity to see the birthplace of our IndyCar engines and to show all the Honda employees our appreciation for all the hard work they put forth to give us such equality.
Well guys, it’s only 362 days until I get another shot at the streets of Long Beach…now it’s on to a completely track and a completely different mentality. This weekend’s race at the Kansas Super Speedway will be my first time back on an oval in nearly 7 months.
Time to start reviewing some in-car videos!
Talk to you next week,
Ryan
The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEEDtv.com, SPEED, FOX, or NewsCorp.
Ryan Hunter-Reay drives for the Vision Racing IndyCar Series team. One of America's brightest young stars, Hunter-Reay worked his way up the open-wheel ladder and joined the ChampCar series in 2003, winning at Surfers Paradise in his rookie year. He followed that up with another ChampCar win in 2004 before moving on to try his hand in Grand-Am, the Baja 1000, and driving the Team USA entry in the A1GP series.
A move to the IndyCar Series in 2007 with Rahal Letterman Racing sparked a resurgence for Hunter-Reay, and in 2008, the Florida resident captured a memorable win at Watkins Glen. With a strong new opportunity at Vision Racing in 2009, more success is expected from 'RHR'.
Learn more about Ryan at http://www.ryanracing.com, about his sponsor IZOD at http://www.izod.com, and share your thoughts with the team at http://twitter.com/VisionRacing.
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